N. Ireland Talks Ignore Deadline

The longest day in this strife-torn province’s politics--a marathon wind-up to bargaining over a peace deal--dragged on well past a self-imposed negotiation deadline of midnight Thursday, but many participants predicted that a landmark agreement would soon be at hand.

“It could be in bright light,” said David Ervine, who leads a party linked with a pro-British Protestant paramilitary group, the Ulster Volunteer Force. “We have a long way to go, but we’ll get there.”

Brid Rodgers of the Social Democratic and Labor Party, Northern Ireland’s biggest Roman Catholic party, which seeks peaceful unification with the Irish Republic, observed: “An agreement is within our grasp. The people want it; the people need it.”

But one key player in the talks, Sinn Fein, the political wing of the outlawed Irish Republican Army, was loudly voicing its dissatisfaction with recent modifications in the proposed settlement, claiming that the changes favored its political enemies--those who want to maintain British rule in the north of Ireland.

As today began, the lights were still burning at Stormont’s Castle Buildings, the drab complex of provincial government offices outside Belfast where British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern and leaders from eight political parties were closeted in search of an accord to end nearly three decades of sectarian conflict and launch a new era in this troubled province.

“The deadline is a movable feast,” Monica McWilliams of the Women’s Coalition, an association of Protestant and Catholic women that is also a party to the talks, said philosophically as midnight came and went. “I always said I wanted to end it by midnight, but I didn’t say which midnight.”

Two weeks ago, former U.S. Senate Majority Leader George J. Mitchell, who is chairing the negotiations, set the Thursday deadline as a way of forcing a settlement. He also promised his wife he would be home by Easter.

The British and Irish governments, sponsors of the talks that began in June 1996, want to cement a deal and get it approved by voters on both sides of the Irish border before the summer season of Protestant marches in Northern Ireland, which could again polarize society along communal lines.

Late Thursday, furious loyalists protesting the talks, which they fear will ultimately lead to Northern Ireland’s absorption by the Irish Republic, broke onto the grounds at Stormont.

Riot police with dogs held them back, though the Rev. Ian Paisley, the leader of hard-line Democratic Unionists, was allowed through.

“You know what’s wrong with the British government?” Paisley, who withdrew from the talks last year, angrily asked in a television interview. “They’re scared of violence on the British mainland, so they are ready to sell out Northern Ireland on the grounds of expediency.”

Mitchell released a 65-page draft to participants in the talks Tuesday. The largest Protestant party, the Ulster Unionist Party, ripped into the draft as too “green”--overly favorable to the Irish government and Catholics in Northern Ireland who want to see an end to British rule.

In a meeting with Blair and Ahern, who have said they will stay in Belfast until a deal is reached, Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble on Wednesday submitted proposed changes.

Since Trimble’s party polls 33% among Northern Ireland’s voters--more than any other party--his agreement is considered necessary if the peace accord is to be approved by the rank-and-file electorate.

Participants are not supposed to disclose details about the negotiations, but it seemed Thursday that Trimble’s party had won some of its points.

On Thursday evening, Trimble was given a standing ovation by his party’s 110-member Executive Committee as he reported what he had been negotiating on its behalf.

A new Northern Ireland assembly, to be created under the peace deal, reportedly would now be given oversight over a cross-border council of legislators linking Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.

The changes angered Sinn Fein, whose agreement or neutrality is considered no less a requirement than Trimble’s approval for the settlement to be a meaningful one.

“They want to undo all the work that has been done here in the recent past,” Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein leader, said of the Ulster Unionists. “That mind-set is at the nub of the current impasse.”