FROM TERRORISM TO STATESMANSHIP

Lady Margaret Thatcher was in the United States last week. When asked about the 48 hour visa for Gerry Adams, political spokesman for the I.R.A., Thatcher summoned up her most resounding tone of indignation and said, "Democracy should never have truck with terrorism." That's noble rhetoric that will continue to ring out until such time as democracy decides that it is time to sit down with the terrorists and make peace.

Thatcher's handpicked successor, Prime Minister John Major, has started down that road, directing his government to conduct a series of secret talks with Adams and his henchmen. Major modifies Thatcher's rules to read: Democracy should never truck with terrorism in public. To truck in private is high diplomacy; to truck in public is very un-British. The indignation that Major has expressed over the Adams visa might ring loud and true if he and his government were clean on trucking. Having already done some trucking himself, his complaints have the ring of hypocrisy.

If, in time, Adams make the conversion from terrorist to statesman, he will most certainly not be the first.

Josef Stalin participated in acts of terrorism in his earlier days. His Soviet regime hit 10 on the Richter Scale of terrorism during the 1930s. Yet he was our "courageous" ally during World War II and a "world statesman" in early postwar peace negotiations -- later descending to fierce enemy when the Iron Curtain came down across Europe.

In postwar Africa, as colonies converted to independence, terrorists became statesmen. The Mau Mau in Kenya were led by, among others, Jomo Kenyatta. He directed numerous acts of terror against the British settlers, serving eight years in jail. When independence came, Kenyatta became the first president of Kenya and in time was welcome around the world as Africa's grand old man of common sense.

In postwar Algeria, Ahmed Ben Bella was one of the commanding terrorists in plotting and executing assassination plots against the French. Some 250,000 French and Moslems were killed, many with unremitting brutality. After the war, Ben Bella was made premier of independent Algeria and posed as statesman of sorts.

Hafez Assad has served as president of Syria for more than 20 years and simultaneously has functioned as one of the world's guiding terrorist practitioners. He appears annually on the Ten Most Successful Bombers list. Most terrorists give up bombs when they do the statesman role, but not Assad -- he's a man for all functions.

Yasser Arafat is the world's most recent terrorist turned Mr. Nice Guy. He spent a lifetime in bombs and blood. When the time was right, democracy ignored his past. He was a featured player on the White House lawn, dramatically shaking hands with his long-time adversary, the prime minister of Israel -- all with the blessing of President Bill Clinton.

Speaking of Israel's prime minister, two of them have emerged from the terrorist ranks. Menachem Begin was a member of the Irgun, a Jewish terrorist organization. In 1946, he was one of the plotters in the bombing of the King David Hotel where 91 people of all faiths were killed. Begin later traded in his explosives for politics. So, too, did his Irgun comrade, Yitzhak Shamir. Shamir was personally and directly involved in the 1948 assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte, the Swedish diplomat serving as U.N. Mediator in the Middle East. He deemed Bernadotte as too pro-Arab. The Count was popped out and later Shamir popped up as a statesman.

One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter. Abhorrent as Gerry Adams, the mouthpiece of murderers, may seem to those with conventional sensibilities, he was a hero to many as his public relations bonanza in New York attests.

Only the future will tell whether Adams joins the others in conversion from thuggery to statesmanship. If in time, Adams denounces violence and accepts the Irish-British framework, he will sit at the peace table with cabinet ministers of the two interested nations. He will be on the road to statesman.

Diplomatic memories are both short and convenient. Some day Adams, like Arafat, may be on the White House lawn shaking hands with the prime ministers of Great Britain and Ireland.