New Rule for N. Ireland Explored

Britain’s Cabinet officer for Northern Ireland said Friday that he is exploring a new political structure for the province in an effort to bring peace, possibly based on power sharing between Protestants and Roman Catholics.

Tom King, the Northern Ireland secretary, gave no details but said he will discuss the prospects Tuesday with the moderate Social Democratic and Labor Party, which represents most of Northern Ireland’s Catholic minority.

There was no immediate reaction. Previous attempts at sectarian power sharing have collapsed under opposition from Protestants. Britain governs Northern Ireland, which is also called Ulster, directly from London.

Protestant political leaders oppose any weakening of British control over the province’s affairs.

King spoke with reporters after hours of talks with Foreign Minister Brian Lenihan of the Irish Republic that focused on increasing security cooperation against a common threat, the outlawed Irish Republican Army.

A joint statement said both governments condemned the increase of violence Northern Ireland and urged both Protestants and Catholics to repudiate those responsible.

“They appealed to both communities to repudiate those in their midst who sought to promote the spiral of violence and to do all in their power to bring this violence to an end,” said the statement issued by the Northern Ireland Office

The talks in a heavily guarded London office marked the first full British-Irish government meeting since Oct. 21, King said.

Twelve people, including two British soldiers, have been killed since March 6, when British commandos shot dead three unarmed IRA guerrillas who allegedly were on a bombing mission in Gibraltar. At the guerrillas’ March 16 burial, a Protestant gunman killed three people and wounded 68 at Belfast cemetery.

The meeting was called under the British-Irish Agreement of November, 1985, which gave the government of the overwhelmingly Catholic Irish Republic a consultative say in the running of Protestant-dominated Northern Ireland.