By Dave Riley
While all attention is focused on Sinn Féin's battle to remain in the northern Ireland peace talks, one vital factor is being overlooked. No progress is being made.
Only one item has been on the agenda: Sinn Féin's continuing participation. Saying that the peace talks are in crisis is really a cliché. In fact, the talks have simply lurched from one crisis to another, with little important business being discussed, let alone agreed.
Now it seems that the British government is determined to throw Sinn Féin out. The Irish government has gone along with the British.
Sinn Féin is fighting against the moves. But the reality is that if Sinn Féin is allowed to stay, the Ulster Unionist Party will probably withdraw in protest.
Unless Sinn Féin can pull off a shock legal victory in the Irish High Court — to which it has turned — it looks certain that the party will be banned for a period of at least three weeks — to be readmitted in time for US President Bill Clinton's planned visit to Ireland. The reality is that with just three months before the talks are scheduled to conclude, the parties haven't even begun real negotiations.
The excuse used to expel Sinn Féin is the recent murder of a loyalist gunman and a drug dealer.
Facing a special non-jury "Diplock" court in Belfast, four men have already been found guilty by RUC Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan, who then branded the four as IRA members — thus servicing the collective Unionist rush to direct blame toward republicans and, by extension, Sinn Féin.
In contrast, nationalists have responded with anger that no similar effort has been made to identify the loyalist killers of up to 20 Catholics in the past 18 months by loyalist organisations involved in the talks.
Despite the fact that Sinn Féin's mandate rests on 200,000 Irish voters, the say-so of Flanagan is deemed sufficient evidence by Britain that the party should be expelled.
The expulsion ignores the party's support in favour of traditional anti-republican propaganda painting the north's third largest party and the largest in Belfast City as "the political wing of the IRA".