Look after the words and the guns will look after themselves

They say you must not negotiate under the threat of bloodshed. But that is exactly what you have to do

First Europe, then the Bank of England and now - why not? - Ireland. Labour's first week in office has seemed like a cavalry charge, a triumphant gallop through obstacles once thought formidable but now grown brittle with age. In a few days, a new road to the European Union has been opened and the Bank freed from the boom-bust urgings of party politics. Why can't this charge carry on and leap through the barriers to a settlement in Northern Ireland?

There's still a giddy feeling that Labour's landslide majority makes all things possible. In some ways, it's true: the majority, plus the annihilation of the Scottish Tories, throws wide open the way to a Scottish parliament and to constitutional change in general. The new government does not need the support in the Commons of the Ulster Unionists, so why not sweep their obstructions aside and, given another IRA ceasefire, reach a deal which brings peace to Ireland and transcends the 1922 partition?

But this would be a catastrophic illusion. It would repeat the old imperial assumption that Irish affairs are ultimately settled in London - a fallacy which has cost much blood and misery over the centuries. Irish people, of whichever cultural tradition, are doomed to settle this last and most intractable quarrel among themselves. Britain can only assist - not least, by knowing when not to throw its weight about. For the past few years, the Tory government had no weight to throw. This Labour government has weight to spare - but I think we can trust Mo Mowlam, the wise woman now at the Northern Ireland Office, not to throw anything. In the labyrinthine china-shop known as the "inter-party talks", every broken saucer resounds like the detonation of a bomb.

The prospects for an early peace are not brilliant. John Bruton, the Taoiseach, visited London last week to meet Tony Blair and to say that "an historic breakthrough" was now possible. Anything is possible. But the Loyalist marching season is approaching, and it looks as if an Irish election is close, this autumn or even next month. The IRA may be practising something like a "de facto ceasefire" for the moment. But it will probably wait to see if there is a change of government in Dublin - to a marginally less unfriendly Fianna Fail administration - before considering another formal ceasefire.

The inter-party talks, without Sinn Fein and so without much point, resume on 3 June. So there is time to reflect about where the "peace process" has got to. The Blair government may use this interval to start secret and utterly deniable contacts with the IRA - I devoutly hope it does. But it is equally important to study the blockages and no-go areas which have appeared in the peace process, and to divide real problems from symbolic posturing.

The talks are bogged down in two main pre-conditions, without which the Unionist parties will not agree to Sinn Fein's participation. Both sound noble, but in fact are pantomime. The first is "prior decommissioning" - that the Provisional IRA, as well as the loyalist paramilitaries, should surrender at least some weapons before negotiations begin. The second is that the IRA should accompany a ceasefire with a pledge never to use force again.

The tale of "decommissioning" in these talks is too contorted to recount except in outline. Ian Paisley still wants the IRA to surrender all its arms immediately. The British have shifted unobtrusively from "prior" to "parallel"; in other words, to accepting the proposal of Mr George Mitchell, the former American senator, that a separate international body should receive paramilitaries' weapons while the main negotiations are going on. The British and Irish parliaments both passed legislation in January granting legal immunity to those who handed in arms. The main Unionist parties still insist that some weapons must be handed in before Sinn Fein can be admitted to the talks, but that the rest might be given up in a "parallel" process later. The IRA's position, in public at least, is that disarmament can only start when the negotiations have produced an acceptable settlement.

I have tried to think of a single case in recent history when a guerrilla movement has agreed to hand over its weapons before sitting down to peace talks with its enemies. Did the armed wing of the ANC do so in South Africa, or Zanla in Zimbabwe, or Eoka in Cyprus, or the guerrilla armies in Salvador or Guatemala, or Renamo in Mozambique? They did not. They would have been mad to do so. It is true that in 1923, at the end of the Irish civil war, De Valera's beaten forces dumped or buried their weapons after proclaiming a ceasefire. But they had suffered unmistakeable, comprehensive military defeat. The Provisionals have not.

The Unionist mantra is that you cannot possibly negotiate under the blackmail threat of renewed bloodshed. But that is exactly what you have to do, if you choose to end such a conflict by talking rather than by a military solution. Even the "parallel" decommissioning plan is illogical, when seen in this light. Suppose half the IRA's weapons have been handed in to the international commission when the talks suddenly collapse. Is the commission supposed to give the guns back to the Provisionals? And, finally, does anyone seriously imagine that the Loyalist and Republican paramilitaries will surrender all their arms? They will follow their traditions and bury some as an insurance against the future - especially as nobody knows how many Armalites, mortars or kilos of Semtex they have.

With the decommissioning illusion has gone the demand for a solemn and permanent renunciation of force as a precondition for talks with Sinn Fein. But this demand is another stroke of pantomime politics. It rests on the curious assumption that the IRA will suddenly become an organisation that keeps its promises. And the promise itself is unreal, even if it is conceded. Everyone knows, surely, that if the peace talks fail or produce a settlement which breaks down, the shooting and bombing are going to start again. That is precisely why the talks are going on, and why it is so fatefully important that they produce a durable settlement. It is as if I demanded a guarantee that my house would never catch fire before I agreed to buy a fire-extinguisher.

After last week's Bruton-Blair meeting in London, there are some signs of a new realism. Nothing was said in public about that prior and permanent renunciation of force which was so important to John Major. Instead, Dr Mowlam said reasonably that there would have to be a genuine, total IRA ceasefire, followed by a trial period to test it, before Sinn Fein could be admitted to multi-party talks. This is already far from the "impossibilism" of the Tory position, which constantly invented new conditions to keep Sinn Fein away from the table.

Even the weapons conundrum is not as grim as it looks. It's a matter of faking up a deal which allows opponents to pretend that they have got their way. The Unionists want it to look as if the IRA has surrendered, which it has not. The IRA wants it to look as if it had won, which it has not. The Mitchell plan is the only way: a gradual hand-over of at least some arms and explosives in parallel with the political negotiations. All sides will then interpret "decommissioning" in their own way, without endangering the peace process itself.

The truth is that it was always a mistake to make weaponry the centre of the talks. We have reached a stage where guns are no longer the real hardware in Northern Ireland. Words are, and the deals fashioned out of words. When and if there is a settlement, the guns will look after themselves.