Sinn Fein president: Dialogue is key

But now, when Gerry Adams, one of the key architects of the Northern Ireland peace process, says that “no conflict is intractable,” his words carry weight.

As president of the political party Sinn Fein and a controversial figure in Irish politics, Adams has often served as the public voice of Irish republicanism and was one of the primary negotiators of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, which helped mitigate the protracted conflict over the British presence in Northern Ireland.

“If I was asked to describe in one word what is required to bring peace, it’s dialogue, and by dialogue I mean genuine, proactive listening,” Adams said when he addressed a full Dodds Auditorium on Friday. Adams’ lecture, titled “Resolving the Irish Conflict: No Conflict is Intractable,” was sponsored by the Wilson School and the Center for the Study of Religion.

“Once you make the decision to have dialogue, it all starts to change,” he added.

In his lecture, Adams made the solution seem simple. “Civilians take up armed actions because they think there’s no alternative,” he said. “So that’s what we did: We found an alternative.”

But after the talk, Adams described the difficulties in starting the initial dialogue. “When I think back on it now, it was actually very amateurish,” he said in an exclusive interview with The Daily Princetonian.

“It was a very, very slow, torturous start,” he added. “There was no blueprint. It was people doing their best to find a way forward.”

One of the biggest challenges, Adams said in his interview, was convincing the Irish Republican Army to accept a ceasefire. According to Adams, it was a matter of putting together a “jigsaw puzzle” of different parties’ commitments to the talks. “It wasn’t a matter of persuasion by virtue of rhetoric or making compelling speeches — it was nuts and bolts,” he said.

Adams’ image as an activist for nonviolence has long been controversial, and he is often accused of having been a member of the IRA. While he has denied the accusations, Adams said in April to the British newspaper Daily Mail that he is “proud” of his association with the IRA.

When a student questioned Adams on the military actions of the IRA after the talk, he said, “I defend and accept the principle of the IRA’s right in a military situation to take action, but I’ve always been critical of those actions when civilians have been killed or hurt.”

Adams further said that “denunciation and condemnation” of the IRA would not help to resolve the conflict.

Instead, in his interview, Adams emphasized the value of forgiveness in his own life after he survived an assassination attempt and was imprisoned without trial by the British government.

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“I didn’t want hatred in my life,” he said. “I didn’t want the claws and effects of hatred to affect me as a human being, to corrode and get in on me.”

Adams argued that the victims of oppression can be the best champions of peace.

“Sometimes those who have suffered the most are the ones who come out and say we don’t want this to happen again,” he said.

The lessons from the Irish peace lie in understanding the value of dialogue and the motivations of those in power, Adams said.

At first, he said that he thought the British discriminated against the Irish because they were ignorant of them.

“Then I realized that those in power were actually the creators of — or they were actuating those injustices — to stay in power,” he said.

The Good Friday Agreement aimed to change that power structure. It set up the Northern Ireland Assembly, which has the authority to appoint the Northern Ireland executive and to legislate on a wide range of issues not explicitly reserved to the U.K. Parliament.

Since the implementation of the pact, Adams has been publicly involved in peace-building efforts in other seemingly “intractable” conflicts around the world, from the Basque separatist movement in Spain to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in the Middle East. In his interview with the ‘Prince,’ Adams argued that the lessons of the Irish conflict can be applied beyond the island.

“The Israeli government might say, ‘We’re not going to do this unless,’ or Hamas might say, ‘We’re not going to do this unless,’ ” he said. But Adams said that “a bit of intelligence” would help negotiators to find a way around those “unlesses,” just as Sinn Fein was able to do in Ireland.

“It’s why my view on the Middle East thing is that we have a process without the peace and we have a peace process waiting for leadership,” he added.

A self-described “ordinary person who happened to be born in Belfast,” Adams emphasized the role that individuals played in bringing the different parties to the negotiations.

“One person — this is a cliche — can make a difference,” he said. He told the story of a group of Irish-Americans who organized a debate between American presidential candidates on “Irish issues.” After Bill Clinton won the election, his statements in the debate led him to make a commitment to press for talks between the British and the Irish.

“I think young people, particularly in the social networking, have a huge possibility to affect the world,” he said. “There are people who can benefit from half an hour a week, 10 letters, seven e-mails, a blog, a Twitter — just some little impact upon another person’s life” can make a big difference.