An Irish informer's fate

A FISSURE divides the people of Northern Ireland, as shown by the murder of the informer Denis Donaldson this week. The best way to mend that society is to engage in constant political dialogue through a provincial government. Assuming the Irish Republican Army, as it claims, was not involved in the killing, Donaldson's death should not thwart attempts to get the government running again.

The government was established under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, but it was supposed to be led by moderates among Catholic nationalists and Protestant unionists. The voters, however, have favored parties on the extreme: Sinn Fein, the IRA's political agent, and the Democratic Unionists.

Donaldson was Sinn Fein's top bureaucrat in the government apparatus until the provincial assembly was dissolved in 2002 following allegations that he was part of an IRA ring stealing government secrets. Last December, he revealed that for the past 20 years he had been a British agent spying on the IRA and Sinn Fein. He left Belfast and was living across the Irish border in an isolated section of Donegal where he was killed by two shotgun blasts.

Spying and betrayal -- how typical of Northern Ireland since the Troubles began almost 40 years ago. But the IRA has renounced violence, and it has not meted out the usual punishment -- death -- to Freddie Scappaticci, an informer equal in notoriety to Donaldson.

The IRA's denial gains credibility because the murder was conveniently timed to coincide with a renewed push by the British and Irish prime ministers to reconvene the assembly. Sinn Fein wants to get back into the government. The Democratic Unionists, however, keep putting forth objections to working with anyone associated with the IRA. A Dublin newspaper revealed Donaldson's whereabouts last month, so anyone who wanted to damage the peace process, or kill him for other reasons, would know just where to go.

A conspiracy theory -- how typical of Northern Ireland as well, where sectarian division promotes suspicion.The 1998 agreement has brought a degree of peace not seen since the 1960s, but it has widened the psychological chasm. Many Catholics feel they are ascendant, and many Protestants wonder whether the agreement has done them any good.

To dispel the distrust, nationalists and unionists need to get together to hammer out policies that can improve the lives of everyone in Northern Ireland. They ought to be figuring out how to tap into the extraordinary prosperity of the Irish Republic without sacrificing the Protestants' attachment to Great Britain. Donaldson was a casualty of a war that has ended, and a peace not fully begun.