British, Sinn Fein Hold Secret Talks; Unionists Angered

The British government revealed Sunday that Northern Ireland Secretary Patrick Mayhew held secret talks last week with Irish republican leader Gerry Adams--drawing the wrath of Protestant unionists.

The meeting was held, the British government said, “to explore the way forward” in the Northern Ireland peace process.

Adams--the leader of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army--declared Sunday that, although Tuesday’s talks in the Northern Ireland city of Londonderry were “businesslike,” they failed to break the stalemate in the peace process.

Adams said he is not optimistic that all-party talks on the future of the troubled province, sought by Sinn Fein, will start soon.

Adams also denied any strain between his party and the Irish government after Dublin criticized Sinn Fein’s return to a campaign of street protests against the British.

Learning of the meeting, Ken Maginnis of the Ulster Unionist Party said, “We are being betrayed by the government holding clandestine meetings behind closed doors which they try and keep quiet from the public.”

The Rev. Ian Paisley, a leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, called the secret talks confirmation of the “government’s diabolical deal with the IRA to sustain the hoax peace process.”

And David Trimble, an Ulster Unionist member of Parliament, said the government had sacrificed its own integrity. “The damage has been done, because these talks were carried out behind people’s backs,” Trimble said.

But the government defended its action, declaring that the meeting was justified and helped maintain the cease-fire in Northern Ireland, which went into effect in September.

Michael Ancram, British minister for Northern Ireland, said the talks were at the request of Sinn Fein and that the government would have been “positively irresponsible” had it not responded.

Ancram said he attended the meeting with Mayhew, Adams and senior Sinn Fein member Martin McGuinness.

“What is important is to make sure processes don’t fail because of misunderstandings, and one of the importances of having meetings of this sort where you can discuss things directly and frankly outside the glare of publicity is that misunderstandings can be removed,” he said.

Ancram denied that the talks were secret, saying that they were simply held in private so that both sides could explain their positions outside public view.

He declined to say whether any specific progress had been made on particular issues.