Blair Meets IRA Allies in Gesture for Peace

In a gesture of peace so fraught with controversy that it was made behind closed doors, a British prime minister shook hands with the leader of the Irish republican movement Sinn Fein on Monday for the first time in 76 years.

The encounter in Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, between Tony Blair and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams lasted just 10 minutes, but it was touted by both as a symbol of conciliation in the fragile search for peace in the province. Hard-line Protestant political parties accused Blair of insulting the victims of terrorism by the Irish Republican Army, of which Adams’ party is the political face.

Minutes after the meeting, up to 100 people, many of them apparently organized by Protestant parties boycotting the talks, jeered and jostled Blair on a visit to a shopping center.

“Traitor!” shouted one man. Some demonstrators waved hands wearing rubber gloves at Blair, taunting him for the handshake with Adams and three other Sinn Fein leaders.

“You are contaminated--I’ll not shake hands with you!” screamed one woman. Another yelled: “Sinn Fein lover, your hands are covered in blood.”

Blair’s one-day visit to Northern Ireland was meant to buoy a peace process that is historic in scope, molasses-like in speed. He met individually with leaders of all eight parties at the talks, including representatives on both the Roman Catholic and Protestant sides who had been jailed for terrorist connections.

Blair said his visit to the currently peaceful but ever-tense province “is an indication that we think genuine progress is being made” in the talks.

His meeting with Adams was held at a government complex and away from cameras, lest pictures subsequently embarrass Blair if the IRA returns to violence and the peace talks collapse. President Clinton tried the same “no pictures” strategy when he met Adams in Belfast in 1995, but their encounter outside a bakery was snapped by Sinn Fein supporters.

Blair would not confirm that he had shaken hands with Adams and other Sinn Fein leaders, saying only that he had treated Adams “in the same way as I treat any other human being.” But aides accompanying Blair confirmed that the prime minister shook hands with Adams, with Sinn Fein Vice President Martin McGuinness, twice convicted for membership in the outlawed IRA, and with two other party officials.

In remarks after the meeting, Blair appeared sensitive to criticism from British loyalists in the disputed province. “You can always go back to the old ways of fighting, violence and despair, and no future for the people of Northern Ireland,” he said, “or we can decide, ‘Yes, we will take risks, but we will take risks fully consistent with the principle of consent, of nonviolence and democracy.’ ”

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Adams made no bones about the Sinn Fein position he presented to Blair. “We want him to be the last British prime minister to have jurisdiction in Ireland,” he told reporters. “We are dealing with a man that certainly recognizes this is a historic opportunity. We recognize also that there needs to be change to bring about transformation, to consolidate the peace process.”

Little progress has been apparent in the talks that opened last month with Sinn Fein in attendance for the first time. But the very fact that militants for opposite positions and both communities in the divided province sit at the same table is seen as a signal victory after centuries of sectarian strife.

Sources close to the talks say American mediator George Mitchell, a former Senate majority leader, is conducting them as he might a union-management negotiation for a new contract. Last week, Mitchell urged the eight parties attending the talks to submit papers outlining their positions on various points at issue, according to these sources.

In context, the situation in Northern Ireland has improved markedly since Blair took office in May. In July, the IRA unexpectedly announced a new cease-fire. Six weeks later, the British government certified that Sinn Fein, which won 17% of the Northern Irish vote in May elections, could attend the talks that opened in September. Blair’s announced goal is an agreement to be submitted to a referendum next May.

Sinn Fein says it speaks for the IRA but is not directly linked to it, a position rejected by all others at the talks and by the British, Irish and U.S. governments.

Mainline conservative opponents scored Blair’s meeting with Adams as premature, and British loyalist leaders in Belfast attacked the prime minister for in effect making Sinn Fein respectable.

David Trimble, the leading moderate among Protestant politicians and head of the province’s biggest political party, said he was “rather sorry” that Blair felt it necessary to meet Adams, “as he knows Sinn Fein is inextricably linked to the IRA. . . . He should bear in mind that they are responsible [for] the murder of thousands of British citizens.”

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Said Protestant hard-liner the Rev. Ian Paisley: “Not only from their graves but from the bereaved families there is an agonized cry of repugnance at the prime minster’s action. It’s a cheap way of cuddling up to America and Europe.”

David Lloyd George was the last British prime minister to shake hands with Irish republican leaders, during talks with Eamon De Valera and Michael Collins in 1921 that led to the partition of Ireland into its current two pieces: a 26-county Irish republic in the south and a six-county, Protestant majority British province in the north.