SENIOR BRITISH and Irish civil servants drafted statements that were subsequently issued by the IRA under its traditional pseudonym "P O'Neill", it has been revealed in a new book on the Northern Ireland peace process.
The disclosure about an intimate relationship between senior IRA figures and top Government officials is contained in The Far Side of Revengeby Deaglán de Bréadún, published this week in an updated edition to mark the 10th anniversary of the Belfast Agreement.
The author, a political correspondent of The Irish Times, and formerly the newspaper's Northern Editor, covers the evolution of the deal that ended the 30 years of conflict in Northern Ireland.
He writes: "A key factor in advancing the process was the existence of a semi-permanent team of negotiators from the different sides: London, Dublin and Sinn Féin.
"This provided an underlying structure for the negotiations, although it meant that sometimes senior civil servants would be brought into meetings ahead of ministers, who would be left waiting outside.
"Since IRA statements were so crucially important, it was inevitable that the two governments would seek to influence the tone and have particular elements included or even left out. Such statements were generally signed 'P O'Neill', which had been the traditional pseudonym used by the Provisionals.
"But P O'Neill began to widen his cloak and, via Sinn Féin negotiators, accept contributions, suggestions and even drafts from impeccably respectable civil servants on both sides who had never fired a shot in anger in their lives.
"These officials even became adept at making the usual gestures towards republican core values while at the same time 'trying to get in a couple of things we wanted'. Some might see this as a corruption of the democratic process, but underlying the whole endeavour was a simple desire, simply expressed: stop the killing."
The author quotes a senior Irish negotiator as saying that Tony Blair and his top adviser Jonathan Powell brought a new note of pragmatism to the British government's approach: "Their attitude was, 'Let's stop the killing and worry about the detail later'."
The book provides an insight into the negotiations and manoeuvres behind the scenes which led to the formation of the powersharing government involving Sinn Féin, the political wing of the IRA, and their long-time opponents the Rev Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party.
The author assesses the outcome of the peace process and examines the issue of whether or not there will be moves towards a united Ireland in the long-term and how this might come about.
He also reveals how prime minister Tony Blair turned the air blue with expletives when he discovered that his government was only giving Mr Paisley a photograph album for his 50th wedding anniversary, whereas the Irish Government was presenting him with a sculpture carved from a tree on the site of the historic Battle of the Boyne.
