‘Moral Courage’ to End Violence Urged on IRA : Ulster: Top Catholic politician says he realizes outlawed group would face enormous challenge accepting British-Irish peace declaration.

The senior Roman Catholic political leader in Ulster told the Irish Republican Army on Tuesday that ending the campaign of violence for a united Ireland would be one of the century’s “greatest acts of moral courage.”

John Hume, leader of the Social Democratic and Labor Party, said he realized that Sinn Fein, the legal political arm of the outlawed IRA, would face an enormous challenge in accepting the terms of last month’s British-Irish peace declaration. The pact offered Sinn Fein a place in peace negotiations if the IRA would lay down its arms.

Hume, the leading Catholic moderate in Northern Ireland and a member of the British House of Commons, in a statement to the IRA declared of possible peace talks: “It will require from the republican movement, given the experience that its members have been through, one of the greatest acts of moral courage of this century.”

“But at the end of the day,” Hume added, “it is moral courage that gives real leadership and that creates truly historic opportunity.”

Hume said that it was time to leave the past behind so that the Ireland of the next century would not be scarred by the gun and bomb, but instead would develop as part of a new Europe.

“Let us commit ourselves to spilling our sweat and not our blood,” he declared.

Hume’s stance as a moderate has won him wide support among middle-roaders in Ulster (as Northern Ireland is also known), Ireland and Britain.

His secret talks with Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams laid the groundwork for the Downing Street Declaration signed in London on Dec. 15 by British Prime Minister John Major and Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds.

Hume said that both the British and Irish governments should be prepared to use methods of communication open to them to give Sinn Fein whatever clarification the organization needs on the wording of the peace declaration.

The Downing Street document specified that talks involving all factions in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic--including Sinn Fein--could begin three months after terrorist activities cease.

Sinn Fein and the IRA are not expected to respond officially to the call for talks until later this month. Their representatives have insisted on the right of all people in Ireland to decide the island’s political future.

Major has supported Northern Ireland’s Unionists, who want continued British rule in the province, by stating that no islandwide agreement could be reached without the consent of Ulster’s million-strong Protestant community.

Meanwhile, in Dublin on Tuesday, a letter bomb exploded in offices used by Sinn Fein, injuring two Irish army officers trying to disarm it, police and army sources said.