Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein's candidate for the presidency of Ireland, has come a long, long way since his role was to assure IRA hardliners that the organisation would never give up its arms and abandon its "armed struggle".
In the early days of the peace process, his task was to reassure militant doubters suspicious that Gerry Adams and other republican "doves" might be going too far, too fast in redrawing republican orthodoxy.
"Our position is clear and it will never, never, never change," he insisted with characteristic bluntness at a Sinn Fein conference in 1986. "The war against British rule must continue until freedom is achieved."
However, today the IRA has put its weapons beyond use and has left the stage. McGuinness pursues his aim of Irish unity by purely political means, saying yesterday that, if elected to succeed Mary McAleese, he would be prepared to meet the Queen.
Governments in London, Dublin and Washington have no illusions about his career as a top IRA leader, during which he must have approved of hundreds of shootings and bombings. Unionists know this, too, yet with their votes they have endorsed the partnership government he heads along with their political representatives.
