Editorial

So much has been happening: various tragedies taking place, different strategies of peace being worked out, the aftermath of the Israeli elections and the indictment of the Sudanese President for war crimes, North Korean provocations and guesswork as to how the Iranian nuclear problem will be confronted. It came as a surprise when a region, many thought had been pacified, suddenly threatened to break away from its peace moorings. Northern Ireland is back in the news.

Two Sappers, due to fly out from Northern Ireland to Afghanistan, were killed last Saturday by an organisation calling itself the Real IRA. The name is styled on the Irish Republican Army.

Forty-eight hours later, a policeman was killed, cold-bloodedly, in Craigavon. He was shot in the head as he sat in his car providing cover for colleagues who had been called out to investigate a case of domestic violence. This time it was the Continuity IRA that claimed responsibility for the killing.

Absurdly, the soldiers were killed as they took delivery of takeaway pizzas, an innocent enough pasttime. Not surprisingly, the families of the dead servicemen described the killers as "pure evil". What, ironically, the Taleban had not managed to do, gunmen in Northern Ireland did in a place regarded as safe after decades of sectarian violence. "You would have thought", a cousin of one of the murdered soldiers remarked, echoing the thoughts of millions, " (Mark Quinsey) would have been safer on British soil..."

The murders naturally shocked the British nation, which has enough on its plate already without having to wonder whether the painfully-arrived at peace process in Northern Ireland was about to unravel. The IRA, which fought British rule for decades and was supported by the Roman Catholic community, and pro-British Protestant guerrilla groups agreed to ceasefires under the Good Friday peace deal in 1998. The agreement helped ease sectarian violence, which left over 3,600 people dead in Northern Ireland since the late 1960s.

The public could not have been reassured when Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, commented, among other things: "The history - and it is a very unsettling history - is that the British Army in Northern Ireland is not wanted by republicans, by patriots, by democrats." Nor was his criticism of Northern Ireland's Chief Constable reassuring.

What message was all this supposed to send out to the Real IRA or, for that matter, to the Continuity IRA? This branch went on record to declare that, as long as there was British involvement in Northern Ireland, such attacks would continue, which sounded like it came straight from the horse's mouth. Still, it is useful to note that Sinn Fein acknowledged that the killing of the two soldiers was "murder". In the case of the policeman, a Sinn Fein Assembly member declared that "This is an attack on the peace process. It is wrong and it is counter-productive..." It is better to assume that both these events are indeed an assault on the peace process. This errs on the side of urgent prudence and sends out a message that complacency should be a vigorous no-no.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown visited the scenes of the soldiers' murder and later promised that the gunmen responsible would be brought to justice.

It would be a tragedy were the effort invested in procuring the present peace to be dissipated; an even greater one if Mr Adams concludes that he can make political capital out of what was nothing less than three assassinations.