Hostility Tempers Optimism in N. Ireland Talks

Negotiations to salvage the stalled Good Friday peace agreement limped along Thursday with no hint from Protestant and Roman Catholic parties that they could break their 14-month deadlock.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who missed the official opening of the new Scottish Parliament to continue the talks, stressed that the two sides had made “historic, seismic shifts” in their thinking.

But his optimism was countered by angry exchanges between Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, and warnings from their aides that they were moving no closer to a deal to form a power-sharing government in the British province.

Blair announced that the talks would continue today, and that if no deal was reached, the British and Irish governments would present their own take-it-or-leave-it blueprint for advancing the April 1998 accord to end Northern Ireland’s 30-year sectarian conflict.

“We have made too much progress to stop now,” a Blair spokesman said.

In Washington, President Clinton also urged the two sides to keep trying, saying that he had offered his own suggestions for breaking the impasse over Irish Republican Army disarmament.

“It will be very hard for the world to understand if this breaks off,” Clinton said. “To call it a tragedy would be a gross understatement.”

The issue that has divided the two sides all along is the Ulster Unionists’ demand that the IRA disarm before Sinn Fein, its political wing, takes seats in a Cabinet.

Aides for Blair and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, said Wednesday that Sinn Fein had committed the IRA to disarmament by May 2000, the date required by the Good Friday agreement.

But the Ulster Unionists’ Trimble angrily denounced that claim Thursday and continued to insist that the IRA had to produce guns before Sinn Fein could be allowed into an executive.

“Despite the spin, despite the smoke and mirrors, there has been, to my knowledge, no commitment by the republican movement to decommissioning,” Trimble said.

Adams, accusing Trimble of “fabrication,” said Sinn Fein had given the Ulster Unionists a detailed proposal for disarmament and that it had been rejected by the Unionists, whom he described as “those who are against change.”

In an effort to break the logjam, Blair met with the 27 Ulster Unionist members of the Northern Ireland Assembly. Trimble and Adams held a late-night meeting, and then all the parties sat down together one more time before breaking for the night.

Against this contentious backdrop, the British army decided to move an additional 400 troops into Northern Ireland--on top of the 1,300 sent last week. They are among more than 17,000 soldiers who are expected to guard against sectarian violence during the Protestant “marching season,” which got underway Thursday.

Every summer, Protestants march throughout the province to mark historic battles, often ones fought against Catholics.

Catholics consider the parades to be provocations, and the marches are often marked by rioting as the two sides clash.

The marching kicked off with a fife-and-drum parade in Protestant East Belfast to commemorate the loss of thousands of Ulster troops in the World War I Battle of the Somme.

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Times staff writer Tyler Marshall in Washington contributed to this report.