Britain, Ireland Unveil a Peace Plan for Ulster

Pledging “to overcome the legacy of history,” Britain and Ireland on Wednesday jointly proposed an audacious--and risky--framework for peace between Protestants and Roman Catholics divided by religious discord, discrimination and violence in Northern Ireland.

“What we plan is an end to the uncertainty, instability and internal division which has bedeviled Northern Ireland,” British Prime Minister John Major said. “We seek to help peace, but only the people of Northern Ireland can deliver it.”

His remarks came after a meeting with Irish Prime Minister John Bruton outside Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, and their formal presentation of a proposal by the two governments intended to provide the basis for settlement of a centuries-old dispute between rival communities that has claimed more than 3,000 lives in terrorist violence over the last 25 years.

“The proposals will challenge the two traditions on this island, but will do so in an evenhanded way. Neither tradition need fear its contents,” Bruton said. “It is a framework for discussion and not a blueprint to be imposed over the heads of anyone.”

British commentators called the proposals the most promising in a 25-year cycle of bloodshed but warned that their success is hostage to reaction by the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland and by terrorists on both sides.

The framework, intended as a basis for continuing negotiation, envisions novel cross-border decision-making between elected representatives of Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, from which it was partitioned 75 years ago.

Britain, for its part, would restore to the province a Parliament suspended in 1972 amid escalating terrorist violence in the province and in England by the Irish Republican Army.

A cease-fire declared by the IRA five months ago and later seconded by Protestant terrorists lent impetus to 14 months of talks between two governments that have both long asserted their right to rule the province called Ulster.

Protestants, most of whom consider themselves British and are called unionists, are a 2-1 majority among the 1.6 million people in Northern Ireland.

Political parties representing them in the British Parliament were as hostile to the new proposals Wednesday as they had been during the anxious anticipation of their publication.

“An eviction notice!” snapped one unionist member.

Not so, Major insisted Wednesday. He said the proposals are urgently needed by Britain, Ireland and Northern Ireland alike “to remove the causes of conflict, to overcome the legacy of history and to heal the divisions which have resulted.”

“Just as people cannot be held within the union against their will, so equally they will never be asked to leave it in defiance of the will of the majority,” Major promised.

Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the IRA, seemed impressed with a document that he said acknowledges the need for fundamental change.

“Its ethos is for one Ireland and an all-Ireland arrangement,” he said.

Northern Ireland, a Connecticut-sized, six-county chunk of the island of Ireland, has effectively been occupied since 1969 by the British army, which has acted as a buffer between the economically dominant Protestant majority and a Catholic minority that thinks of itself as Irish.

Under the framework agreement, Ireland would amend articles in its constitution that assert sovereignty over Ulster and would acknowledge the right of the majority there to decide whether they should remain part of Britain or join Ireland.

Britain would also amend its laws to allow for majority rule on the province’s political future. Both countries would guarantee the civil, political, social and cultural rights of nationalist Catholic and loyalist Protestant communities in the province.

Major, appealing for popular support among a people weary of violence and stagnation and grateful for recent months of peace, reiterated Bruton’s promise that no solution will be imposed.

“No proposal for the future would be workable, let along successful, without the consent and active support of all Northern Ireland’s people,” he said Wednesday. “That is why any eventual settlement must be agreed by the parties, supported by the people of Northern Ireland in a referendum and approved by Parliament (in London)--a triple consent procedure.”

Opposition from Protestants, many of them descendants of English and Scottish settlers who arrived early in the 17th Century, scuttled a 1973 Anglo-Irish power-sharing proposal for the province, and Major faces a hard sell of the newest ideas.

“It is not a document for discussion but a manifesto leading to the creation of a united Ireland,” said William Ross, a unionist member of Parliament.

The Rev. Ian Paisley, a unionist radical, wrote in an angry message to Major on Wednesday: “You have sold out the union.”

A key provision of the new initiative calls for the new Northern Irish Parliament in Belfast to cooperate on development and other issues with the Irish Parliament in Dublin to the south.

The idea of a blurred border is less incendiary in the new Europe than it might have been two decades ago. But unionists nevertheless say it would represent a fatal erosion of their British status.

The two governments say the restored Parliament, a 90-member Assembly elected by proportional representation, would have “an equitable role for both sides of the community.”

London and Dublin would cooperate on Ulster policies. But neither would have authority to interfere with the new Assembly.

It would work with its counterpart in Dublin to establish a third body--an authority made up of representatives from the Irish Parliament and the Assembly--that would staff cross-border agencies with responsibilities originally set out by London and Dublin.

Areas of cross-border cooperation might include tourism, roads, agriculture and health policy. Details of this controversial proposal must still be worked out. But additional responsibilities could be added by agreement of future Irish and Northern Irish legislatures.

In the wake of Wednesday’s publication, the ball now rests with the union parties in Northern Ireland.

Major is banking on a more moderate response than the initial howls of pain once the framework is fully analyzed.