US visit to 'peaceful' Ulster fuels hopes for breakthrough on arms

The Irish peace process will be a secondary issue to the war in Iraq at the Bush-Blair summit. The extraordinary irony is that Northern Ireland, previously such a dangerous place, is now one of the safest places outside the US for George Bush to meet Tony Blair.

This is for a number of reasons. Belfast violence is at a low level, security forces are experienced at guarding VIPs and Ulster Protestants are generally supportive of the Iraqi war.

While nationalists, both north and south, heartily approve of US involvement in Irish affairs, most are against the war in Iraq. It is a fair bet that few of those who protested outside Hillsborough last night were Unionists.

Nationalist disapproval of the Iraqi war extends even to Sinn Fein, who until recent years made unlikely peaceniks. Thus while Gerry Adams will meet President Bush this morning, his party chairman, Mitchel McLaughlin, figured last night at the anti-war rally.

But a more fundamental reason for staging the summit in Northern Ireland is that the local peace process looks ripe for another quantum leap forward, possibly within the next few weeks. It is natural that Mr Blair and Mr Bush should wish to closely identify themselves with any breakthrough, since London and Washington, with Dublin, can reasonably claim to have engineered it.

All have been involved in months of negotiation to get Stormont out of the suspended animation in which it was placed after last year's crisis, which centred on the discovery of political espionage by the IRA. Although there is no guarantee of a breakthrough, the signs are good. On Thursday, London and Dublin will launch a package of measures dealing with paramilitary guns, fugitive terrorists, policing and other matters.

The strong hope is that the IRA will respond to this with an important move on arms in the next few weeks. If this is dramatic enough, the theory runs, then David Trimble's Ulster Unionist Party will be sufficiently impressed to agree to go back into government with Sinn Fein. Assuming all this goes according to plan, elections to the Belfast Assembly will be held on 29 May, followed by the restoration of devolution to Stormont. An unofficial "plan B" in some minds envisages all this happening, but not until the autumn.

At one stage, it looked as though an IRA move would be accompanied by a hugely symbolic declaration of support for the police by Sinn Fein: now the general feeling is that this will come, but not yet. Mr Bush has never shown the type of close interest in Northern Ireland shown by Bill Clinton, but his administration has none the less continued to take a detailed interest.

Critically for nationalists and republicans, the US condemned IRA involvement in Colombia but did not, even after the 11 September attacks, classify the IRA as outside the pale.

Rather, the administration warned republicans that such adventurism had to stop. This stance has chimed with Mr Blair's demands on the IRA to come forward with "acts of completion" to show that it is leaving paramilitarism behind.

The next few weeks will tell whether all this will take shape. If it does, such a breakthrough will be seen as a triumph for Mr Blair and President Bush.