N. Ireland Prison Killing Imperils Talks

Fears for the Northern Irish peace process mounted today after Irish republicans shot dead a Protestant guerrilla chief incarcerated in the top-security Maze prison.

Billy Wright, 37, was shot five times in the back Saturday by prisoners belonging to the Irish National Liberation Army, or INLA, a splinter guerrilla group. Prison officers said the inmates fired at Wright from a roof while he was being escorted to the visitor’s center at the prison.

Marjorie “Mo” Mowlam, Britain’s Northern Ireland secretary, joined the Irish government and others Saturday in urging people to stay off the streets after the killing.

But a hard-line pro-British splinter guerrilla group threatened to unleash a campaign of violence in retaliation for the assassination of its leader.

Despite appeals for restraint, the Loyalist Volunteer Force, Wright’s own breakaway paramilitary faction, warned that it would avenge his death. “The LVF will widen its theater of operations in the coming weeks and months,” the group said in an authenticated statement.

Within hours of Wright’s death, security was tightened across the British province as two buses and a car were set on fire, possible evidence of a Protestant backlash.

In an apparent reprisal for the prison slaying, gunmen opened fire Saturday night outside Glengannon Hotel near Dungannon, 40 miles west of Belfast, hitting four people, authorities said. The BBC reported that one victim had died. No one claimed responsibility immediately.

Mowlam told reporters that the murder at the prison, which she called a “very serious lapse in security,” had the potential to wreck the fragile peace process.

“I would say to everybody to show calm and common sense. Taking to the streets and taking other action at this point will not stop the chaos and misery that we have lived through in Northern Ireland for so many years.”

Wright’s murder “is an attack on the peace process itself. It is a stark reminder, a horrible glimpse of the past,” she said, ignoring calls for her to resign.

Mowlam said she believed that the multi-party peace talks would survive. “But I don’t in any way underestimate the seriousness of this.”

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Peace talks got underway in earnest in September when Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, was admitted for the first time. But progress has been painfully slow.

Mary Harney, Ireland’s deputy premier, told Irish radio that it was vital for the peace process to avoid any overreaction to the killing.

But Ken Maginnis of the mainly Protestant Ulster Unionist Party accused Mowlam of failing in her responsibility for Northern Ireland’s prisons.

“We’ve got to question her competence and why we have such chaos within our high-security prisons. Is it not laughable, and should she not be held to account?” he said.

The INLA on Saturday admitted responsibility for the murder in a statement issued in Belfast.