London, Dublin Reported Near Peace Pact for Ulster

After 11 months of quiet negotiations, the British and Irish governments are reportedly close to agreement on a formula they see as a first step toward ending 16 years of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

Yet the agreement, if concluded, may spark more violence. Hard-core Protestant groups have vowed to launch a terrorist campaign if the pact threatens Protestant political dominance in the province.

Few details have been made public, but Britain is believed to have offered the Irish Republic a formal role in Northern Ireland. This would be part of a plan aimed at ending the political isolation of the British province’s minority Roman Catholic community and boosting its confidence in British government institutions.

“Ending the alienation of the minority is the key,” a senior Irish government official said. “Without it, there can be no agreement.”

A high-ranking British government official said: “It is not the ultimate solution. What we’re talking about is an important beginning.”

People familiar with the talks, here and in Dublin, believe that formal announcement of an agreement could come early next month. Officials in both capitals caution, however, that negotiations are not yet complete.

If the talks succeed, British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and her Irish counterpart, Garret FitzGerald, are expected to meet to sign the accord.

The Irish Republic’s involvement, possibly in the form of having an Irish government minister take up residence in Belfast, Northern Ireland’s provincial capital, would be consultative only. Britain would retain sovereignty in the province, where Protestants outnumber Catholics about 2 to 1.

To lessen the northern Catholics’ sense of isolation, the following steps, among others, have been discussed:

--Closer cooperation between the republic and security forces in Northern Ireland.

--Restructuring paramilitary forces in the province, which is also known as Ulster, in order to reduce their domination by Protestants.

--Formation of an advisory body on Northern Ireland to be made up of members of the Irish and British parliaments.

Majority’s Consent

Also, any agreement would likely include a reaffirmation of the republic’s commitment that reunification of Ireland is possible only with the consent of a majority of the people in Northern Ireland. This would reassure Northern Ireland’s Protestants, who look on any concessions to the Catholic community as a threat to their existence.

It was resistance by the northern Protestants to joining an independent, Catholic-dominated Irish Republic that divided Ireland in 1920. There has been little peace since.

In recent speeches, the republic’s foreign minister, Peter Barry, has repeatedly stressed the need for his countrymen to respect the heritage of Ulster’s Protestant community as well as its opposition to Irish unity. Others responsible for explaining Ireland’s policy have been careful to note that the way to achieve Irish unity is to get more northern Protestants to support the idea.

While the republic’s conciliatory position on Ulster is not new, the level of rhetoric stressing it is. It was in the early 1970s that the Irish government first began to shift from its previous view (still held by many Irish-Americans) that Ulster was a colonial problem best resolved by immediate British withdrawal.

President Reagan has personally expressed his Administration’s support for an agreement that would ease tension in Northern Ireland. And there have been hints of possible U.S. financial support to spur economic development in both Northern Ireland and the republic if an accord is reached.

2,500 Dead Since 1968

Ulster’s current sectarian unrest began in 1968. So far, the toll is nearly 2,500 dead and 24,000 injured, and a small but important corner of Europe has been made politically unstable.

Young people have grown up in Ulster to the sound of bombs and police sirens. The antagonisms between Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods are manifest in a 20-feet-high cement wall that separates them in west Belfast.

The biggest question mark over the negotiations is the reaction of Ulster’s 900,000 Protestants to any agreement that they feel would compromise their political dominance. Leaders of the province’s two largest Protestant parties, including the Rev. Ian Paisley, have vowed to resist any such accord with strikes, political protest and violence.

Some Protestant organizations like the Ulster Defense Assn. have promised a terrorist campaign against any Irish Republic presence in Ulster, and several members of the British Cabinet are said to be concerned. For it was Protestant opposition in the early part of the century, including threats of civil war, that eventually turned the British Parliament away from granting independence to a united Ireland.

More recently, in 1974, a Protestant general strike led to the scrapping of an Anglo-Irish agreement that would have given the minority Catholic community a share of political power in Ulster.

Protestant Backlash

But a number of factors could reduce the impact of the expected Protestant backlash this time. Among them:

--Prime Minister Thatcher has an unassailable majority of 139 seats in Parliament and that would make an empty gesture of any threat by Ulster’s 15 Protestant members to withdraw their support from the government.

--Years of inflammatory rhetoric by Protestant political leaders like Paisley have tended to erode sympathy for the Protestant cause in mainland Britain, and any direct appeal they might make to the British people would find only limited sympathy.

--With Britain’s next general election at least two years away, and Northern Ireland only a marginal item on the list of British voter priorities, Thatcher is in a better position than her predecessors to defend any concessions that might be made.

--FitzGerald also holds a relatively strong position, with a small but solid five-seat majority in the Irish Parliament. And the Irish voter is much more concerned about economic issues than Ulster.

Popularity of Sinn Fein

The sudden rise in popularity of Sinn Fein, the legal political wing of the terrorist Irish Republican Army, has convinced both Irish and British officials that moderate Catholic politicians, who advocate eventual Irish unity by peaceful means, must be supported and given a visible, meaningful role in Ulster’s political framework. The IRA is outlawed in both the republic and in Ulster.

Sinn Fein won 59 of 566 seats in local government elections in Northern Ireland last May, deflating British propaganda that the party appealed only to the radical fringe. The Sinn Fein showing also reflected spreading frustration among Ulster’s 600,000 Catholics.

Although Sinn Fein is committed to a united, Catholic Ireland, its radical policies, including the advocacy of violence, have caused the Irish government as well as the British to oppose it.

Staggering Cost

The stakes involved in the negotiations are high. Aside from the bloodshed and the demoralizing effects of sectarian hatred, the economic cost has been staggering. So far, the Irish and British governments have been drained of an estimated $10 billion, and a similar amount has been sacrificed in lost investment opportunities.

Largely because of the violence, Northern Ireland continues to be the most economically depressed region of Britain, requiring a net inflow of $2 billion a year in government money. And the situation has severely complicated efforts at long-term economic and social planning.

Summing up the situation, an Irish official said: “We need an agreement that will have some real impact in the streets. That is what will count.”