Some N. Ireland Protestants Oppose a Visit by Clinton

Some Protestant politicians Tuesday sent a message--loud and clear--to President Clinton, who has said he might visit here to campaign for a “yes” vote in this British-ruled province’s May referendum, part of the newly approved peace process.

The message: Stay home.

“I don’t think it will be helpful, at this stage, for the president of the U.S. to become directly involved in a democratic vote here in Northern Ireland,” said Reg Empey, chief negotiator for the largest Protestant party, the Ulster Unionists, at talks that led to a proposed peace settlement Friday. “The people of Northern Ireland will want to make up their own mind on a very important question without people from outside the U.K. becoming involved.”

A member of Parliament from firebrand Rev. Ian Paisley’s smaller, hard-line Democratic Unionist Party, which is scheduled to launch a campaign today for a “no” vote May 22, was far less diplomatic, accusing Clinton of meddling. “Northern Ireland always welcomes world leaders who are coming in friendship, but those who are coming to interfere in the internal electoral process are clearly not welcome,” Peter Robinson said.

On Monday, Clinton said he hadn’t yet decided whether he will visit Northern Ireland during next month’s referendum campaign and said he was awaiting advice from the British and Irish governments and political parties here. “If it would help, of course I would be willing to go,” Clinton said. “If they said I should go, I’d be happy to go. . . . But it would be up to them.”

His telephone calls to participants in the 22-month-long negotiations, including David Trimble, head of the Ulster Unionists, played a crucial role in clinching Friday’s agreement. The pact provides for power-sharing between Protestants, who generally want Northern Ireland to remain under British rule, and Roman Catholics, most of whom would like unification with the Irish Republic.

Trimble, whose party received 33% of the vote last year, more than any other, has not spoken out against Clinton’s proposed visit; like other politicians, he may be in favor of it. For now, though, Trimble is trying to quell a mutiny in Ulster Unionist ranks, with at least half of the party’s 10 members of Parliament believed to oppose the peace deal. On Saturday, the party’s executive committee backed Trimble and the proposed settlement by a 2-to-1 ratio. But both face another hurdle at a meeting of the party’s 700-member council next weekend.

Meanwhile, the Grand Council of the Orange Order--a powerful group with more than 30,000 members that for two centuries has seen itself as standard-bearer for Protestants in Ireland--is to discuss the proposed settlement today at a meeting in Belfast, the provincial capital. Rejection could doom the peace package’s chances among Protestants, 54% of Northern Ireland’s 1.6 million people.

At the other end of the political spectrum, the policymaking executive body of Sinn Fein met in secret Tuesday to consider the agreement. Starting Saturday in Dublin, the capital of Ireland, Gerry Adams and other leaders of the party, the political wing of the outlawed Irish Republican Army, will seek backing from the party’s council. If support isn’t overwhelming, the IRA’s 9-month-old cease-fire could be undermined.

Clinton often has referred to his December 1995 visit to Belfast and Dublin as one of the high points of his first term in office. Many people in Northern Ireland still express gratitude to American visitors for the president’s trip.

“He’s enormously popular in Ireland. People there recognize that he played a central role in this process,” George J. Mitchell, the former U.S. Senate majority leader who chaired the Belfast talks, said Monday after meeting with Clinton.

But some Protestant politicians, conscious of the political weight of Irish-American Catholics, are suspicious that the White House’s ultimate goal is the north’s reunification with the mostly Catholic south.

In other developments, officials in Ireland announced Tuesday that they had released nine IRA members from a high-security prison, the first such gesture since Friday’s agreement.