For years, he had tried to discourage paramilitaries and ordinary citizens on both sides of the sectarian divide from resorting to violence. But he had come to believe that the surest way to end the conflict would be to persuade the IRA to stop fighting. Reid broached the issue with Gerry Adams and discovered that he was prepared to entertain the idea. Perhaps Adams had a different vision for the future; perhaps he had found that the ballot and the bullet were not mutually reinforcing but were actually at cross-purposes; perhaps he was simply exhausted. Whatever the case, Reid found that when
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