Gesture politics must have their place, no matter how uncomfortable they might be to some of the participants, or distasteful to those looking on. Or not looking on, as the case may be. A handshake is, of course, a gesture of welcome and recognition. If, indeed, Mr Blair did shake the hand of Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams last night he did it properly in private. Mr Adams carries extremely nasty baggage with him, as indeed do the other former paramilitaries whom the Prime Minister met, loyalist as well as republican. Yet there has been no outcry about the prospect of Mr Blair shaking hands with the former loyalist paramilitaries now engaged in the peace talks who were jailed for sectarian murder or planning to plant bombs. It is none the less proper to remind Mr Adams of the last time he shook hands with a world leader, President Clinton in Belfast, and how three months later the Provisional
IRA blew up Canary Wharf, killing innocent people.
The ceasefire must hold, on all sides, because the people of Northern Ireland want a normal life, as Mr Blair noted yesterday. He has already ruled out a united Ireland for, effectively, the next 50 or 60 years. The representatives of the eight participating parties in the peace talks whom he met individually at Stormont Castle are well aware of the framework in which the multi-party talks are taking place. And in his speech to the Labour Party conference Mr Blair left no-one in any doubt about the importance he attached to finding lasting peace in the province. It was the issue to which he had paid more attention than any other since becoming Prime Minister and yesterday he added a sense of urgency, saying that all sides had to crack on and make as much progress as possible if a referendum on a proposed solution was to be held in May next year.
That is the potential prize. Mr Blair's visit to Northern Ireland, his second since coming to power, was intended to put the seal on the negotiations. They remain at a tentative stage but we take heart from the fact that the participants have been talking for a significant length of time. Mr Blair was right not to speak to Mr Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party or the UK Unionists, both of which are boycotting the talks. Their bitter words about Mr Blair shaking Mr Adams's hand would have been taken more seriously if their parties were in the talks. If long-term peace is to be achieved the issue of who shook hands with whom will rightly be consigned to the footnote of history.
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