THE involvement of the IRA in the biggest bank robbery in Irish or British history does more than cast doubt on the sincerity of Sinn Fein's commitment to democratic politics. It raises fundamental questions about the strategy pursued by the Irish and British governments for the past few years. The drive by Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair to involve Sinn Fein in a power-sharing executive in the North may have been admirable to begin with, but the continued and relentless pursuit of this goal in the face of overwhelming evidence of republican bad faith was foolhardy and even dangerous.

The SDLP and the Ulster Unionist Party were sacrificed without a second thought and politics in Northern Ireland were, as Seamus Mallon, has observed, "balkanised", in the scramble to keep republicans happy. Even when a significant slice of the Fianna Fail vote was gobbled up last June, the Irish government continued the quest for the magic formula that would put Sinn Fein into power in the North and probably in the Republic too at some time in the not too distant future.

The price that has been paid for the appeasement of Sinn Fein has been the corruption of democratic standards in both parts of the island. The routine acceptance by governments and the media that the IRA army council should be the arbiter of what is politically acceptable has warped the development of democratic politics in the North.

Politics in the Republic was sliding down the same road until Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny asked his question in the Dail about the proposed release of the killers of Garda Jerry McCabe. The outraged public reaction to the Taoiseach's admission that a deal had been done to release the killers in the event of an agreement between Sinn Fein and the DUP demonstrated that there is a significant segment of public opinion south of the border that is unwilling to give the IRA a veto over the working of our democratic institutions.

To be fair to the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, he refused to be bullied by the Sinn Fein leadership into dropping the requirement that the IRA should cease all criminal activity as part of the proposed settlement last month. Although Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness strongly resisted any reference to criminality, the minister held his ground and insisted that some reference to the subject should be made. A draft statement, which the republican leadership resisted and the IRA refused to endorse, committed the IRA to "recognising the need to uphold and not to endanger anyone's personal rights and safety".

The IRA refused to sign up even to this oblique reference to criminality but mysteriously the Taoiseach made no mention of this issue conference with Blair and neither did the British prime minister. It appeared as if the only point still outstanding was the DUP demand for photographs of decommissioning. After the agreement collapsed, McDowell publicly raised the issue of criminality and the Taoiseach said he agreed with his minister.

How matters had managed to get to the verge of agreement with the issue of photographs being the only one apparently still outstanding was never properly explained.

The involvement of the IRA in the A£26.5m robbery at the Northern Bank in Belfast demonstrated just why the republican leadership refused to give a cast-iron commitment to ending criminal activity. If a deal had gone ahead and the robbery had taken place the two prime ministers would have looked very foolish. By contrast, the republican attitude was logical to the two leaders and they had caved in on earlier occasions when the issue of criminality was raised in negotiations.

Even the famous paragraph 13 of the Joint Declaration of 2003, which defined what was no longer acceptable behaviour from paramilitary organisations, carefully refrained from mentioning criminality. In the most recent set of negotiations, there is every reason to believe that if McDowell and the Department of Justice had not insisted on some reference to criminality then the two prime ministers would again have turned a blind eye. Given that the Provisional IRA has long been the biggest crime organisation on the island of Ireland, questions must be asked about what the government has been playing at.

In response to the announcement by the PSNI chief constable, Hugh Orde, that the IRA are the chief suspects for the Northern Bank robbery, the Taoiseach was curiously restrained, saying that it was a setback for the peace process but adding that everybody involved would have to work harder to secure a deal in the next few months. It was an extraordinarily mild response given the nature of the issues as stake.

It is time for Ahern and Blair to accept that there is little they can do until republicans sort themselves out and decide where their future lies. Sinn Fein has huge political ambitions north and south but recent events have probably been a setback for its prospects in the Republic. It is republicans themselves who have most to lose in political terms through the continuation of criminality and the Sinn Fein leadership knows that.

If Ahern and Blair stopped humiliating themselves, a viable political solution and an end to all IRA activity might happen that bit sooner.

NEVER BEFORE has it happened in Lebanon. Since the Syrian army entered the country in 1976 . . . just a year after the start of the 15-year Lebanese civil war and at the request of Lebanese Christian Maronites . . . there has been no public debate about the presence of thousands of Syrian troops here, nor the suffocating political grip which Damascus has maintained over the Beirut government.

But last year's United Nations Security Council Resolution 1559 . . .demanding the withdrawal of foreign troops from the country . . . and an aggressive US State Department policy towards Syria has suddenly released a tide of resentment and debate.

Even Walid Jumblatt, the Druze Leader and a hitherto reliable ally of Syria, now says that Lebanon is the last satellite country on earth.

The Lebanese are stunned. They know that the regional tour of the US neo-conservative deputy secretary of state Richard Armitage . . . demanding a Syrian withdrawal and the disarmament of the antiIsraeli Hizballah militia . . . is part of Israel's agenda in Lavant and a weakened Syria, along with a pliant Lebanon without any antiIsraeli forces on its border, is almost as pleasant for Washington and its Israeli friends as an emasculated, American-dominated Iraq . . .another aim of Armitage.

Syria's supposed support for the Iraqi insurgency . . .another of Armitage's griefs . . . has a special irony. It was Lebanese rebel General Michel Aoun's alliance with Saddam Hussein in 1990 which originally inspired the United States to support Syria's destruction of Aoun's statelet.

But Syria's control of Lebanon has become as tired and as blatant as the Soviet Union's domination of the Warsaw pact. The successful attempt of proSyrian president Emile Lahoud to add three years to his presidency, courtesy of the Lebanese parliament, was too much. Lebanese newspapers which had hitherto confined their criticism of Syria to news agency dispatches written in Europe or America suddenly editorialised their suspicions of Damascus in a way that must have shocked Syria as much as their readers. "Damascus must review its policies on Lebanon . . . immediately, " demanded the Daily Star.

On 13 December the socalled 'Democratic Forum' including Christian and leftwing groups and Jumblatt's Druze party denounced the interference "of the Syrian and Lebanese intelligence services which have transformed Lebanon into a police state".

Almost immediately, offices of the Syrian Mukhabrat intelligence services were closed in Beirut and Syrian forces in the mountains above the city were redeployed. There were rumours that the Syrians had approached the British Embassy in Damascus offering to reduce their estimated 14,000 troops in Lebanon to a mere 3,000 . . . tasked to protect Syrian anti-aircraft radar scanners in the Lebanese Bekka Valley Damascus was allegedly told that the scanners needed only 300 soldiers to defend them.

Syria's presence has never been as pernicious as Israel's occupation of southern Lebanon, which ended in 2000, but the Christian Maronite community . . . which failed to oppose Israel's 1978 and 1982 invasions . . . has always claimed to lead Lebanon's opposition to Syrian tutelage. Syria's constant demand that Israel abide by UN's resolutions . . . most notably 242 which demands an Israeli withdrawal from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip . . . makes the current crisis all the more dangerous. Can Syria insist on Israel's abidance by UN resolutions while ignoring 1559? There are those here who believe that the young president Bashar Assad has failed to grasp how serious is the Lebanese demand . . . and the UN resolution . . . for Syrian withdrawal.

Christian Maronites suspect that real Syrian power in Lebanon is exorcised by the head of Syrian military intelligence, General Rustom Ghazali, rather than the Syrian president Ghazali's predecessor, Brigadier General Ghazi Kenaan, now minister of the interior in Damascus, charged with the country's sensitive Iraqi file.

Syrian intelligence agents move easily among the one million Syrian "guest workers in Lebanon" but the Lebanese have long memories.

Walid Jumblatt's father Kamal resisted Syria's overtures at the start of the civil war and was assassinated in the Chouf Mountains. Jumblatt's close aide and friend, Marwan Hamade, was the target of a car bomb last November.

Leaving his home near the seafront, he swapped places with his bodyguard only seconds before the detonation. The bodyguard died. Hamade survived.

Lebanese politics may appear Byzantine, even boring but they can be deadly to the participants.

THE involvement of the IRA in the biggest bank robbery in Irish or British history does more than cast doubt on the sincerity of Sinn Fein's commitment to democratic politics. It raises fundamental questions about the strategy pursued by the Irish and British governments for the past few years. The drive by Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair to involve Sinn Fein in a power-sharing executive in the North may have been admirable to begin with, but the continued and relentless pursuit of this goal in the face of overwhelming evidence of republican bad faith was foolhardy and even dangerous.

The SDLP and the Ulster Unionist Party were sacrificed without a second thought and politics in Northern Ireland were, as Seamus Mallon, has observed, "balkanised", in the scramble to keep republicans happy. Even when a significant slice of the Fianna Fail vote was gobbled up last June, the Irish government continued the quest for the magic formula that would put Sinn Fein into power in the North and probably in the Republic too at some time in the not too distant future.

The price that has been paid for the appeasement of Sinn Fein has been the corruption of democratic standards in both parts of the island. The routine acceptance by governments and the media that the IRA army council should be the arbiter of what is politically acceptable has warped the development of democratic politics in the North.

Politics in the Republic was sliding down the same road until Fine Gael leader Enda Kenny asked his question in the Dail about the proposed release of the killers of Garda Jerry McCabe. The outraged public reaction to the Taoiseach's admission that a deal had been done to release the killers in the event of an agreement between Sinn Fein and the DUP demonstrated that there is a significant segment of public opinion south of the border that is unwilling to give the IRA a veto over the working of our democratic institutions.

To be fair to the Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, he refused to be bullied by the Sinn Fein leadership into dropping the requirement that the IRA should cease all criminal activity as part of the proposed settlement last month. Although Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness strongly resisted any reference to criminality, the minister held his ground and insisted that some reference to the subject should be made. A draft statement, which the republican leadership resisted and the IRA refused to endorse, committed the IRA to "recognising the need to uphold and not to endanger anyone's personal rights and safety".

The IRA refused to sign up even to this oblique reference to criminality but mysteriously the Taoiseach made no mention of this issue conference with Blair and neither did the British prime minister. It appeared as if the only point still outstanding was the DUP demand for photographs of decommissioning. After the agreement collapsed, McDowell publicly raised the issue of criminality and the Taoiseach said he agreed with his minister.

How matters had managed to get to the verge of agreement with the issue of photographs being the only one apparently still outstanding was never properly explained.

The involvement of the IRA in the £26.5m robbery at the Northern Bank in Belfast demonstrated just why the republican leadership refused to give a cast-iron commitment to ending criminal activity. If a deal had gone ahead and the robbery had taken place the two prime ministers would have looked very foolish. By contrast, the republican attitude was logical to the two leaders and they had caved in on earlier occasions when the issue of criminality was raised in negotiations.

Even the famous paragraph 13 of the Joint Declaration of 2003, which defined what was no longer acceptable behaviour from paramilitary organisations, carefully refrained from mentioning criminality. In the most recent set of negotiations, there is every reason to believe that if McDowell and the Department of Justice had not insisted on some reference to criminality then the two prime ministers would again have turned a blind eye. Given that the Provisional IRA has long been the biggest crime organisation on the island of Ireland, questions must be asked about what the government has been playing at.

In response to the announcement by the PSNI chief constable, Hugh Orde, that the IRA are the chief suspects for the Northern Bank robbery, the Taoiseach was curiously restrained, saying that it was a setback for the peace process but adding that everybody involved would have to work harder to secure a deal in the next few months. It was an extraordinarily mild response given the nature of the issues as stake.

It is time for Ahern and Blair to accept that there is little they can do until republicans sort themselves out and decide where their future lies. Sinn Fein has huge political ambitions north and south but recent events have probably been a setback for its prospects in the Republic. It is republicans themselves who have most to lose in political terms through the continuation of criminality and the Sinn Fein leadership knows that.

If Ahern and Blair stopped humiliating themselves, a viable political solution and an end to all IRA activity might happen that bit sooner.