Peace in pieces.

WHEN President Clinton came to Ireland before Christmas, he had to cut short his triumphal visit because of Bosnian obligations. But he promised cheering crowds that he would return in the summer, to play his postponed round of golf in Ballybunion, in Kerry, and to celebrate the peace which he had helped bring to Ireland.

The President seemed to have every right to rejoice. American pressure had caused the Irish and the British governments to keep the peace process trundling forward. Round-table talks were scheduled for the end of February, and a special commission headed by special advisor George Mitchell would examine the thorny issue of disarmament, which had been brought to center-stage by British and unionist insistence that talks could only start once disarmament had been begun. This was a demand which Sinn Fein-IRA flatly rejected.

Most commentators wrote that the President's visit had saved the peace process; even I thought that crunch-time had been postponed until the end of February. How wrong we all were.

The American contribution to the peace process remained vigorous, both at diplomatic levels in Washington and through George Mitchell, who was indefatigable in his canvassing of opinions in Britain and Ireland. His report -- when finally presented a week late -- was superb, and written in an English of admirable clarity and incisiveness.

Yet it came to nothing. Two weeks and two days after the Mitchell Commission reported, and with three weeks still to go before the scheduled talks, the ceasefire ended. The IRA blew London docklands apart one Friday rush-hour, killing two citizens and injuring over a hundred others. We passed a new and terrible threshold when that happened and back over that threshold no passage is possible. We cannot return to what we were before that bomb. The peace process which had been so carefully nurtured, cossetted, and fed died as completely as the dead of the IRA bombers.

The very next day, in the IRA heartland of South Armagh where scores of soldiers and policemen have been killed in the past twenty-five years, the IRA restored jeering signs to warn soldiers -- Snipers at work. The snipers have not yet returned to their lethal industry, but the soldiers' body-armor is back on, the safety catches are off their SA-80 rifles, and the affable pre-docklands saunter has been replaced by foot-patrol stealth.

How did we come to this dismal pass? Nationalist Ireland blames John Major. Did he not present Sinn Fein-IRA with impossible conditions? Did he not reject the Mitchell Report on the decommissioning of weapons? Did he not take the unionists' side against nationalist Ireland?

No. John Major did not do most of the things he is accused of, but that simple truth has been lost in the din of dispute and wailing ambulances. John Major did not present Sinn Fein-IRA with impossible conditions. Quite the reverse. He accepted the Mitchell Report on the decommissioning of weapons the morning of its publication, thereby abandoning his long-held precondition that the IRA must begin disarmament before talks.

He did not abandon the aspiration that this should happen. And in the absence of the paramilitaries abandoning their guns before talks, he suggested a mechanism which could bring confidence to the people of Northern Ireland -- he proposed that all those who wish to participate in round-table talks receive a mandate from the people in Northern Ireland to do so. This was the proposed convention which has caused such indignation.

It might not have been the most sensible idea; but to consult people democratically about something as vital as round-table talks is hardly heinous. There might be practical objections, but surely there is no principled opposition to discovering the general feelings of people in Northern Ireland.

The unionist population favored a convention; so too, in opinion polls, did most nationalists. If there was error in the proposal, it was not Major's alone -- and it was error, not Brit-Machiavellianism. But John Major's fragile majority in the House of Commons was adduced as a reason why he should attempt to conciliate unionists with a generosity which could scupper peace.

THE truth is that all factions in this process have to be conciliated. Nationalist Ireland sometimes seems to think that the only people to get to the round-table are Sinn Fein-IRA. Not true. All the factions in Northern Ireland -- and there are many of them -- have to be represented. And the two main Protestant parties, the Ulster Unionists and the Democratic Unionists, have said that they will not sit down with a still-armed Sinn Fein-IRA; but they said they would enter a convention containing elected Sinn Fein members.

That is a start, and not a bad one. And it is worth pointing out that the British government has not refused to meet Sinn Fein-IRA representatives. Quite the reverse. The British government has had an open-door policy toward Sinn Fein-IRA. A known IRA Army Council member has been present for most of those talks. Only two weeks before the London bombing, the British and Irish governments jointly hosted a tripartite conference with Sinn Fein, during which the republicans were able to make a full presentation of their case.

The British government was not the only government in sympathy with elections before talks. White House officials told Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams early in February that the convention idea might be worth considering. This was the day Mr. Adams met and was photographed with the President. It was the day when the President publicly endorsed Sinn Fein's role in the peace process.

Nine days before, the very day that George Mitchell unveiled his commission report, the IRA had actually begun the operation which was to end two lives in London and do $150 million damage to London's docklands. On January 24, a tax-disc was stolen from a truck in Northern Ireland and used as a cover for the truck used in that bombing. The man the President met was not the leader of an organization dedicated to peace. That organization, the creature with two names and two outward appearances but one inner core, Sinn Fein-IRA, was already embarked upon its return to war.

Did Gerry Adams know this? In detail almost certainly not. But he was probably aware of the general closeness to war the IRA had come; the President of the United States shook the hand of this man. Another such handshake is unlikely to occur again.

Why did the IRA blow the peace process apart? Because it had come to the end of the line. Elections would only reveal the smallness of Sinn Fein's support within Northern Ireland, a state Sinn Fein-IRA are determined still to bring to an end. That fixed goal, the dissolution of the Northern Irish State, the departure of the British, and the unification of Ireland, remains at the heart of the Sinn Fein-IRA dream.

So what next? The Irish government has said it will have no further talks with Sinn Fein until the ceasefire is restored. But what kind of ceasefire will keep people happy? The ceasefire we lost was 'complete.' So what will replace it? Another 'complete' ceasefire? Or will we get neither peace nor war? In either case, we shall get no political progress at all. The unionists of Northern Ireland will not sit at the same table as Sinn Fein-IRA this year; and President Clinton will probably not be playing golf in Ballybunion this summer.