Unionists Stand Ground Against ‘Unfair’ Deal to Save N. Ireland Pact

From the hilltop Drumcree Church here, overlooking a field of razor wire and armored police jeeps, to the fortified headquarters of the Ulster Unionist Party in Northern Ireland’s capital, Protestants were in no mood Saturday to compromise for peace.

Instead, the 18-foot steel barricade that the army has erected to keep Protestants out of a Roman Catholic neighborhood during the annual Drumcree march in Portadown today was emblazoned with the same sectarian message that has fanned 30 years of bloodshed: “No Government for Sinn Fein-IRA.”

And Ken Maginnis, one of the Ulster Unionist Party’s more moderate leaders, categorically rejected the eleventh-hour proposal to salvage last year’s Good Friday peace agreement as “a con.”

“We cannot accept this. It is not an option--it is an ultimatum,” Maginnis told the BBC’s Ulster Radio. “There is nothing in this for unionism.”

In fact, the deal to create a Protestant-Catholic government in Northern Ireland and to disarm the Irish Republican Army offers something to both sides in the conflict and requires each to make sacrifices.

The plan was put forward Friday by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, after five days of negotiations failed to produce an agreement between the Protestant and Catholic parties. It calls for the establishment of a Northern Ireland government by July 15 that would take powers from Britain three days later.

Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, would be given the two seats it is due on the 12-member Cabinet based on its proportion of last year’s vote for a new Northern Ireland Assembly.

The IRA, which declared a cease-fire nearly two years ago but until now has been unwilling to give up its guns, would be expected to begin negotiations with an international disarmament commission within days and then to start surrendering its weapons within weeks.

If either side failed to meet its obligations under the agreement, the whole deal would be off.

Maginnis said Saturday that Ulster Unionist opposition to the proposals was nearly unanimous, with only one of the party’s 27 assembly members speaking in favor of the Blair-Ahern plan. Presumably, that was Ulster Unionist chief David Trimble, who would be first minister of Northern Ireland, but even he has called the deal that he must try to sell to his party “fundamentally unfair.”

Unionists do not like the fact that the plan ignores their long-standing refusal to form a government with Sinn Fein before the IRA relinquishes at least some of its weapons.

They also do not appreciate that failure by the IRA to deliver or destroy weapons would bring down the government for Unionists too. They want Sinn Fein to be expelled from an ongoing government if the IRA does not comply.

“In reality, if we went forward and the thing fell apart, it’s not the guilty who are punished. It’s the innocents,” Maginnis said.

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, who supports the plan but did not sign on to it when the Unionists refused, insists that the problem goes much deeper.

“It isn’t about guns. It is about the Ulster Unionist Party not being prepared to have Catholics . . . in government with them,” Adams insisted during the talks.

Trimble denied this, saying he is ready to work with Sinn Fein once the IRA has been disarmed.

Blair has told the Unionists many times in recent days, as he did once again Saturday, “If you want decommissioning of paramilitary weapons, this is the only way to get it.”

He has not said what will happen if Unionists fail to sign on to the agreement but has indicated that he has no more offers up his sleeve.

The Unionists’ unwillingness to sign is rooted in distrust. They simply do not believe Sinn Fein--or the guarantees of a British government that many now see as betraying their cause.

Their intransigence would seem to belie a widespread desire on the part of most residents of Northern Ireland to secure the Good Friday agreement, which was approved by 71% of voters in June 1998, and to join modern Europe. In the crowded shopping centers and restaurants of the provincial capital, Belfast, there is an oft-expressed longing to “give the politicians a good kick in the arse,” as one welder said, so that average people can get on with their lives.

Maginnis tried to counter that view Saturday, saying that his telephone was ringing off the hook with doctors, businesspeople, farmers and laborers insisting that “we cannot accept this” deal.

An even harder line was expressed in Portadown, which has been the scene of ritualized aggression and mutual hatred for the past five years.

“No Fenian road for me,” said a 41-year-old truck driver, using a 19th century term for Irish nationalists. “The only bullet the IRA decommissions is on somebody’s skull. There’ll never be peace.”

Asked if he didn’t want to take a risk on a better future for his two teenage sons, he answered, “No.”

Throughout Saturday, Protestants from around the Portadown area, west of Belfast, arrived at the small bridge separating the Protestant neighborhood around Drumcree Church and the Catholic neighborhood on Garvaghy Road to see the fortifications installed by the British army and the Royal Ulster Constabulary in the past two days.

The Protestant Orange Order fraternity has been barred from marching down Garvaghy Road during its annual parade today to avert clashes with local residents. But a similar ban last year led to a violent 10-day standoff between police and Orangemen that subsided only after the firebombing of a Catholic home in Ballymoney killed three young Catholic brothers and shocked the nation.

Many of the Orange Order parades held in July celebrate the victory of the Protestant King William of Orange over Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. They are seen by Catholics as a display of Protestant triumphalism and domination.

The Drumcree march, in fact, is to honor the thousands of Northern Irish soldiers who died in the 1916 Battle of Somme during World War I. Many Catholics were among the fallen members of the 36th Ulster Brigade, but that fact is lost on both sides, and the commemoration is a strictly Protestant affair.

But intolerance is a two-way street here. Catholics on Garvaghy Road, who say they have lived under siege for the past five summers, are adamant that Protestants should not be allowed to parade past their houses for all of the 10 minutes it would take.

“They can march down their own road,” said Michele Chambers, 18, who works in a heater factory.

Learning from their mistakes last year, British security forces have come in heavy with about 3,000 troops, as well as water cannons and fortifications. The pretty field where angry Protestant demonstrators stationed themselves last year has been plowed into a “sterile zone,” laid with stakes and rolls of razor wire and sealed with concrete blocks. A creek through the middle has been widened and sandbagged in parts to create a trench barrier.

“We’ve planned for the worst-case scenario,” said Royal Ulster Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan. “We don’t expect the worst-case scenario, but we’ve planned for it.”