Protestant Groups Won’t Match Cease-Fire : Northern Ireland: Militants loyal to Britain say they want proof IRA is committed to peace.

Protestant paramilitary groups loyal to Britain issued a statement here Thursday saying they would not declare a cease-fire to match the one observed by the outlawed Irish Republican Army for the past week in Northern Ireland.

The Combined Loyalist Military Command, which wants continued British rule in the province, said that before calling a cease-fire it would need proof that the IRA’s armistice is holding and that no secret peace deals were made with the Irish nationalists by the British government. The group also wants guarantees that Ulster, as the Protestants call Northern Ireland, would remain in the United Kingdom after a peace settlement.

However, political observers noted that no loyalist attacks have taken place since Sunday, and that the paramilitary groups may well be observing a de facto cease-fire without publicly committing themselves to one.

Eric Smyth, a unionist city council member here, said of the announcement: “They’re being careful, keeping people guessing. But the very fact they used the language of cease-fire is to be welcomed.”

Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds, who this week held an unprecedented meeting with the IRA’s political spokesman, Gerry Adams, had called on the loyalists Wednesday to participate in the cease-fire. And in a message to Northern Ireland’s Protestants that appeared in Thursday’s unionist Belfast Telegraph, Reynolds said: “The Irish people want no hand, act or part in any attempt to coerce or cajole a majority of the people in the north into a united Ireland against their will.”

Reynolds said that preparations for the all-party peace talks that London and Dublin have been trying to arrange since December included no secret paramilitary input into the “framework” document being readied by Britain and Ireland.

At the same time, the Belfast Telegraph published what it called the first details of the framework document setting out the two governments’ ideas for the future of Northern Ireland. The document, the paper said, calls for replacement of most ministers in the Northern Ireland Office (NIO) with locally elected politicians, and an 85-member Assembly that would take over most of the responsibilities now administered by the NIO.

The Assembly would be responsible for the departments of agriculture, environment, economic development, health and social services, education, finance and personnel. Security would remain under the British-run NIO. The province would also have a bill of rights protecting religious freedoms, cross-border consultative bodies between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, and a commitment by Dublin to remove from the Irish constitution territorial claims to the north.