British Agree to Higher-Level Sinn Fein Talks : Northern Ireland: Key secretary and Gerry Adams to hold most senior contacts yet while in Washington next week.

In a new overture in the peace process, Patrick Mayhew, Britain’s Northern Ireland secretary, invited Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to meet him informally in Washington next week.

It would be the highest level yet of contacts between the British government and Sinn Fein, the political arm of the militant Irish Republican Army, or IRA.

The announcement here was welcomed by Irish Republicans and fiercely criticized by Northern Ireland unionists.

Mayhew and Adams are among the political leaders invited by President Clinton to attend a Washington meeting to encourage U.S. businesses to invest in Northern Ireland; this session is a follow-up to a December meeting in Belfast. Industrialists have displayed greater interest in investing in the troubled province since the IRA declared a cease-fire in September.

Mayhew said he would make it clear when meeting with Adams that real political talks with Sinn Fein would be possible only when the IRA moves to “decommission” its weapons; that would entail turning in or destroying arms stockpiles.

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Political sources here said Mayhew decided to see Adams to prevent speculation about their possible meeting in Washington and waylay a media event that threatened to overshadow the conference. Sources said it also offered a way for the British government to put a more positive spin on talks with Sinn Fein. Until now, the British have sent only a junior minister to Belfast talks with the group.

In Belfast on Thursday, unionists complained that the government is too ready to compromise with Sinn Fein and should wait until the political wing agrees to urge the IRA to decommission its weapons.

And in London, some Conservative members of Parliament had their own complaints.

“I despair,” Tory David Wilshire said. “I am really disgusted. When is the government going to stop bending the knee to terrorism? It now seems that everything Sinn Fein demands, the government grants without anything in return. It must abandon this policy of abject surrender to terrorists and stand up for law, order, justice and the United Kingdom.”