Editor's Letter

The Face of Terror?

When Vanity Fair special correspondent Maureen Orth first encountered Gerry Adams, at a White House party in 1995, she says, she had no interest in meeting him: "I thought he stood for the I.R.A., and the I.R.A. stood for terrorism." The English—who have suffered from years of murderous Irish Republican Army bombings—remain rightly skeptical of Adams's claim that his party, Northern Ireland's Sinn Fein, is genuinely committed to making peace. Sinn Fein is closely linked to the I.R.A., and Adams's visits with President Clinton notwithstanding, the U.S. government officially considers him a terrorist.

Following Adams from Belfast to London and going back over the history of Northern Ireland's quarter-century of "Troubles," Orth came to appreciate the complexity of his present situation. Though her profile of Adams ("The Juggler," on page 64) contains evidence that he has been a high-ranking member of the I.R.A., he now is trying, Orth believes, "to take people who rely on guns and make them give that up. He has moved on intellectually, but he doesn't want to repudiate them. He has to try to bring them along with him—to make them understand that there's something in it for them." As she points out, the task of British prime minister John Major is equally difficult, of course: the Protestant Unionists don't want to make concessions, either.

Recent history is full of the sort of high-wire act Adams is performing. Yasser Arafat, no stranger to the terrorist activities of the P.L.O., has nevertheless helped bring the Palestinians closer to peace with the Israelis than

many ever thought possible. And Nelson Mandela forged a democratic end to apartheid in South Africa despite the violent tactics of his African National Congress (which, like the I.R.A. and the P.L.O., was labeled a terrorist organization by the U.S. government).

The key to any successful negotiation, aside from a willingness to forgive, is obviously trust. And trust, as Orth found, is something that is still sorely lacking on both sides of Northern Ireland's bitter civil war.