Major Says He’ll Continue IRA Talks : Britain: The prime minister says backdoor negotiations are useful to persuade against violence. But new attacks in Ulster offer a grim outlook.

LONDON — British Prime Minister John Major on Tuesday affirmed his determination to keep a controversial diplomatic channel open to the outlawed Irish Republic Army if the contact can bring peace to troubled Northern Ireland.

“It is useful to continue to have a confidential channel of communication,” Major said, answering questions in the House of Commons. “I hope these contacts would help the IRA to understand that violence cannot succeed.”

His comments came a day after his Northern Ireland secretary, Sir Patrick Mayhew, gave a spirited defense of the government’s controversial 10 months of backdoor exchanges with the IRA. The communications were the latest attempt to end nearly a quarter-century of sectarian violence in the northern Irish province.

More than 3,000 people have died during that period.

The secret contacts caused a sensation when they were made public by a London newspaper Sunday and led to angry scenes in Monday’s parliamentary debate on the issue. Hard-line Northern Ireland Protestant member Ian Paisley was ejected from the House for his outbursts during that session.

The majority of members, however, appeared to back the government’s efforts.

Major’s remarks also came on a day when renewed violence in Northern Ireland provided a grim reminder of just how distant peace remains.

In Belfast, police said a 47-year-old Roman Catholic construction worker was shot and killed as he left his shift shortly after midnight, and a Protestant extremist group claimed it carried out the assassination.

Several hours later, shots were fired into the home of a Belfast city councilman representing Sinn Fein, the legal political wing of the IRA, but no one was injured. Protestant extremists are believed to have conducted that attack too.

The IRA, which has long advocated violence to achieve its political goal of breaking British control in Northern Ireland and bringing the province into a united, Roman Catholic Irish republic, countered by tossing a homemade bomb at a combined army-police foot patrol operating in a Belfast Catholic neighborhood.

Police also worked 14 hours to defuse a 2,000-pound bomb at a traffic intersection two miles north of the city of Armagh, apparently left, but not detonated, by the IRA.

Revelations of the British government-IRA contacts, along with hints that the IRA may be considering at least suspending its campaign of violence in the province, have raised expectations for a meeting between Major and his Irish counterpart, Albert Reynolds.

That meeting, initially scheduled for Friday in Dublin, could be delayed because of extra preparations needed as a result of last weekend’s disclosures. The British and Irish governments have worked together for several years to find a formula for peace in the province.

“The push for peace is now up to Major and Albert Reynolds,” noted Joseph Hendron, a lawmaker with the small, mainly Roman Catholic Social Democrat Labor Party.