IRA Rejects Accord’s Disarmament Clause

The Irish Republican Army refused to disarm as part of a Belfast peace accord, infuriating Protestant leaders, who vowed to exclude its allied Sinn Fein party from any new Northern Ireland administration. Hours later, a car bomb containing more than 600 pounds of explosives forced the evacuation of hundreds of people from shops in Lisburn, a mostly Protestant town southwest of Belfast, until the unclaimed bomb was safely defused. The IRA called the April 10 accord “significant,” but it rejected the section requiring rival paramilitary groups to disarm.