Endgame in Ulster?
Talks without direction.

July 18, 2001 8:55 a.m.

as the Good Friday agreement that brokered a cease-fire in Northern Ireland and established a power-sharing Northern Ireland Assembly and executive finally run into the buffers? That seemed to be the case over the weekend when the Weston Park talks between the British and Irish premiers and the leaders of the main ''pro-agreement parties'' collapsed over — yet again — the IRA's refusal to de-commission its armory of weapons.

The British government must now either suspend the Northern Ireland Assembly or call new elections — elections that are likely to produce an assembly even more divided and hostile to the power-sharing agreement than the present one.

Since the Good Friday agreement was sold to the Catholics as a giant stride toward a united Ireland and to the Protestants as a strengthening of the link with Britain, it can never really succeed. It must always be a source of disagreement, conflict and friction.

But if it cannot succeed, it can nonetheless ''not fail.'' It can be the occasion for endless renegotiations as the various parties try to get their interpretations of it accepted or, if things look bleak, to pin the blame for its likely breakdown on the other side, without the process ever actually breaking down. And however intransigently the other parties behave, the two governments cannot walk out of the talks because, as they themselves say from time to time, ''there is no Plan B.''

It hardly needs saying that for London and Dublin to boast that they have no alternative to successful negotiations is not itself the best negotiating tactic. It tells the other parties at the table that they can demand more as the price of any final agreement. And that is especially so for those parties that actually have an alternative to negotiating.

Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein, for instance, can abandon negotiating whenever the IRA signals a return to terrorism. Hence the IRA's repeated refusal to disarm. Hence, too, last week's nationalist riots in the Ardoyne area of Belfast. Since nothing happens in the Ardoyne without the IRA's approval, as Conor Cruise O'Brien has noted, the riots were a strong hint to both governments that ''an end to the cease-fire'' remains a Catholic-nationalist option if negotiations fail.

Not that Tony Blair's government needs any such reminder. Ever since the Downing Street Declaration, under both Blair and his predecessor John Major, British policy has been driven by one consideration: preventing any resumption of the IRA bombing of London. And since British ministers cannot be sure that even stringent military and police measures would succeed in preventing an IRA bombing campaign on the mainland, they have to rely entirely on persuading the IRA not to bomb London.

What caused the talks to founder, maybe temporarily, last weekend was the growing resistance of the Protestant-Unionists. They have now reached the conclusion — not an unreasonable one — that as long as the IRA retains its weapons, the peace process will continually drift in a Catholic-nationalist direction — because the two governments will be perpetually fearful of an IRA resumption of violence. Unless the IRA disarms, therefore, the main unionist parties will not remain in government with them on the grounds that democracy should not be held hostage to the threat of violence.

Some on the Protestant side have already drawn more terrible conclusions. Significantly, one of the small parties linked to the Protestant paramilitaries, the Progressive Unionist Party, walked out of the talks early last week in protest of the constant concessions to Sinn Fein. They have pledged not to break the cease-fire — yet. But they are clearly moving in that direction.

And as the threat of renewed violence grows on both sides, the British — with Dublin's full support — have effectively disarmed themselves. They have no Plan B. The British policy today is like the title of an old comic movie: ''Carry On Talking.''

Unfortunately, Blair has nothing useful to say.

This originally appeared in the Chicago Sun-Times.