Irish Nationalist Expected to Get U.S. Visa : Northern Ireland: Sinn Fein leader likely to speak to members of Congress and be allowed to visit several cities.

Nationalist leader Gerry Adams said Friday that he will apply for a visa to revisit the United States and hopes to arrive before the end of the month.

He is expected to be invited to address members of Congress to explain developments in the Northern Ireland peace process following the historic cease-fire declared last week by the outlawed Irish Republican Army.

President Clinton is expected to approve the visa for Adams on the grounds that the cease-fire was declared and is holding, despite the refusal by loyalist paramilitary groups to announce a similar truce in the 25-year-long conflict.

The visa application will be opposed by the British government, which also objected to Adams being granted entry last February. But the Clinton Administration overruled the objections; Adams, president of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, spent 48 hours in New York City in a media blitz, presenting his version of the cause of Irish unity.

This time, Adams is expected to seek, and get, a less restrictive visa that will allow him to travel to New York, Washington, Chicago, Boston--and perhaps San Francisco and Los Angeles.

But militant Protestant leader the Rev. Ian Paisley, a member of the British Parliament, warned that U.S. “interference” in the affairs of Northern Ireland could bring closer “the time for civil war” in the troubled province.

Paisley made his comments after meeting the U.S. consul general here. He argued against issuing a visa and said any visit by Clinton to the province--although none has been suggested--would provoke widespread protest by Protestant unionists, who want continued British rule in Northern Ireland.

But another leading unionist member of Parliament, John Taylor, said Friday that he thinks the IRA campaign of violence is effectively over.

“My gut reaction is that this cease-fire is for real,” said Taylor, a member of the moderate Ulster Unionist Party.

The upbeat remarks by Taylor, who was shot several times by an IRA gunman in 1972, were thought to lift some of the unionist pressure on the Clinton Administration to deny Adams a visa.

Earlier Friday, the primate of the Protestant Church of Ireland, Dr. Robin Eames, pleaded with the loyalists to call a halt to violence--and heed British Prime Minister John Major’s personal assurance to him that there had been no secret deal negotiated between London and the IRA.

The senior cleric warned the Protestant paramilitaries, “If the perception on the part of many Protestants that the current peace process is somehow confined to the nationalist or Republican community is allowed to grow, it will place a dangerous imbalance on the possibilities of long-term peace.

“Rarely has sensitivity to each other’s feelings been more important than at this time,” he added.

Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds, who signed a declaration with Major last December opening the way for all-party peace talks on Northern Ireland, also urged the loyalists to end their violence.

“Take your time in making up your minds,” he said. “You are entitled to time, the same as others were entitled to time, but at the end of the day we want to see you participate in and contribute to the creation of a permanent and enduring peace on the island of Ireland.”