Quite men behind the scenes

religious divide in Northern Ireland.

WHEN historians come to trawl the tortuous build-up to the IRA's

ending of its 25-year military campaign, the five central figures in the

story will be Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds, Prime Minister John

Major, US President Bill Clinton, the SDLP leader John Hume and the Sinn

Fein president Gerry Adams.

In the next rank of credits are senior politicians like the Irish

Foreign Minister, Dick Spring, the Northern Ireland Secretary of State,

Sir Patrick Mayhew, and the SDLP deputy leader, Seamus Mallon.

Full access to documentary and oral sources will enable the historians

to uncover the involvement behind the scenes of a number of diplomats

and churchmen who played a crucial intermediary role between Sinn

Fein/IRA and the Dublin government.

Among the diplomats a trusted role was played by Dr Martin Mansergh,

the special adviser to Mr Reynolds. A Tipperary-born Protestant, Dr

Mansergh is the son of the late historian, Nicholas Mansergh, who wrote

the magisterial work on The Unresolved Question: the Anglo-Irish

Settlement and Its Undoing, 1912-72.

Now as it were, Nicholas's Oxford-educated son is trying to completely

undo that book by spearheading this latest attempt to reach a final

settlement of what George Dangerfield called ''the damnable question''.

With his anglified accent and donnish appearance, Martin Mansergh

looks a most unlikely contender to be the confidant of an Irish

Taoiseach, moving furtively around Belfast and other towns in Northern

Ireland on secret assignments. But this he has done loyally in this

capacity with Charles Haughey and now Albert Reynolds.

Dr Mansergh is imbued by the idealism of the United Irishmen of two

centuries ago who were crushed in the Great Rebellion of 1798. Their

philosophy of reconciling Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter seeps

through the speeches which he assiduously prepares for Mr Reynolds.

It may be no coincidence that Mr Reynolds, who once described himself

as ''a one-page memo man'', has acquired a taste for voluminous

historical novels.

While church leaders such as the Catholic and Anglican primates,

Cardinal Cahal Daly and Archbishop Robin Eames, have contributed to the

peace moves, the history books will pay an enormous homage to a

Belfast-based monk, Father Alex Reid, a Redemptorist priest at Clonard

monastery in republican West Belfast.

Without naming him, Mr Reynolds, in the Dail, paid tribute to Father

Reid, who since January 1992 acted as ''a respected clergyman

intermediary''. It was Father Reid who conveyed messages back and forth

between Mr Reynolds and Sinn Fein.

According to a source close to Mr Reynolds: ''Father Reid was at all

times absolutely reliable in conveying what the various views within the

republican movement were.''

Not surprisingly, there have been unconfirmed reports that British

intelligence bugged the Clonard monastery. Not only was Father Reid a

major conduit between Dublin and Belfast, he was a broker of the talks

between John Hume and Gerry Adams, which began in 1988, the year he came

to public prominence when he was photographed giving the last rites to

two soldiers who had been beaten up by angry and frightened local people

in West Belfast and then shot by an IRA gunman.

As for Dublin's links with the Protestant population in Northern

Ireland, Mr Reynolds has concentrated his attention on securing an

equivalent ceasefire from the loyalist paramilitaries. A trusted adviser

to the Irish Premier is a Presbyterian minister at Dundonald in Belfast,

the Rev Roy Magee.

Mr Magee is a frequent contributor to BBC programmes and has been

meeting the loyalist paramilitaries for the past three years.

On the Gay Byrne radio chat show yesterday Irish Prime Minister Albert

Reynolds spoke of how he was approached by a former army officer who

told him he did not understand Northern Ireland Protestants. Mr Reynolds

asked what did Protestants want and asked to be informed in writing.

When the text came back, Mr Reynolds had this incorporated in the

Downing Street declaration as part five of the agreement. This contains

six sentences which include commitments to free political thought,

expression of religion, the right to equal opportunities regardless of

class, creed, sex or colour and the right to seek constitutional change

by peaceful means.

However Mr Reynolds's appeals last weekend for a loyalist ceasefire

appear to have alienated their leaders, who feel that he is interfering

in their affairs and is backing a Hume-Adams pan-nationalist movement.

Last Friday too a Dublin-based peace activist, Chris Hudson, who is a

Unitarian minister spoke to sources close to the Ulster Volunteer Force,

and he reported their thinking back to Dick Spring. On Mr Hudson's

advice Mr Spring issued a statement on Sunday evening reassuring

loyalists that the Irish government had not entered into any secret

deals with the IRA which would undermine their right to remain British.

Only hours after Mr Spring issued his statement, loyalists claimed

responsibility for a car blast outside the Sinn Fein headquarters in

Belfast. More intensive persuasion by anonymous mediators is needed to

get the loyalists to abandon the gun and the bomb.