These Provisional IRA military activities of 1996–97 were widely believed to have been used to gain leverage in negotiations with the British government during the period.O'Brien, pp. 370–371 Whereas in 1994–95, the British Conservative Party government had refused to enter public talks with Sinn Féin until the IRA had given up its weapons, the Labour Party government in power by 1997 was prepared to include Sinn Féin in peace talks before IRA decommissioning. This precondition was officially dropped in June 1997.Maillot Agnès (2005). New Sinn Féin: Irish republicanism in the twenty-first century. Routledge, p. 32;
