SUDDENLY, the struggling Northern Ireland peace process is rocked by key player John Major.

He flatly declares that the IRA would have to cease all paramilitary activity before any new cessation of violence was seen as sincere and genuine enough for Sinn Fein to have a say at the peace talks.

Thus, it is not just the bomb and bullet which the IRA would have to ditch, but the lesser signs of its presence - such as punishment beatings and surveillance.

This response has angered not only Sinn Fein and the republican SDLP which was brokering its approaches to Downing Street, but has also upset the Irish government.

This is because it departs from Dublin's view - which, apparently, it believed was shared by London - that Sinn Fein could be included in the talks on the strength of a cessation with fewer strings.

Publicly, of course, John Major has to present a firm front towards terrorism.

But, as past disclosures of behind-the-scenes dialogue and the Prime Minister's personal commitment to the peace process have shown, he is nonetheless prepared to be flexible - as, ultimately, all sides must be if a political solution to the Northern Ireland problem is to be found. So why is he talking so tough just now - to the extent that Sinn Fein accuses him of sabotaging the peace process altogether?

The thorny and tortuous path along which the process has stumbled these past 18 months has, of course, seen many such setbacks.

But usually, for all the tough public posture, John Major has emerged from all of them still prepared to offer an olive branch.

Yet now he is seen as the author of a truly serious setback.

Could that be because now the Prime Minister is focused more on his own survival than on that of the peace process - and for the sake of that he must take the hard line in order to purchase the crucial Commons' votes of the Ulster Unionist MPs.

There is no doubt that John Major has done more than any of his two predecessors at Downing Street to find a peaceful solution to the Northern Ireland problem and bring an end to to bloodshed and violence that it has wrought.

But if the pragmatism of his clinging to power is to bring a disastrous climax to the peace process, he is perhaps in danger of being remembered not as the Prime Minister who was its major architect, but the one who destroyed it.

That would be a sad note to go out on - when the echoes would be deadlier still for the people of Northern Ireland.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.