Last-Ditch Effort Seeks to Save N. Ireland Peace Accord

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, held four hours of talks with Northern Ireland’s Protestant Unionists and Roman Catholic nationalists on Friday in a last-ditch effort to save the Good Friday peace agreement, and said they had made “some progress.”

The two leaders went into the meetings in Belfast armed with a formula they hope will break the impasse between nationalists and Unionists over disarming the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and forming a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland.

“Once again, we stare into the abyss,” Blair wrote in Friday’s edition of The Times of London. “Somehow we must pull back. If the Good Friday agreement collapses, the result is not a better peace, it is no peace at all.”

Blair urged the Unionists to let the IRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein, join an executive Cabinet that is to be formed in Northern Ireland in return for delivering a “clear guarantee” that the paramilitary group will give up all weapons by May 2000, the deadline set in the April 1998 Good Friday peace accord.

Under Blair’s proposal, the Northern Ireland government would be dissolved if the paramilitary group reneged on a timetable for disarming that is to be set out by the head of the international decommissioning body, retired Gen. John de Chastelain of Canada.

The Unionists have demanded that the IRA begin handing over weapons before Sinn Fein takes the two seats in the Cabinet due to it as a result of elections last year. The IRA has refused to start turning over weapons, saying the accord did not make disarmament a precondition for Sinn Fein’s participation in government. The nationalists question the Unionists’ willingness to share power.

Blair dismissed Sinn Fein’s repeated protests that it cannot make the IRA disarm.

“No one will believe that a party with a close connection to a paramilitary group could not bring about decommissioning,” Blair wrote.

At the same time, he told Unionists they had to accept “that there must be an inclusive executive.”

Neither the Unionists, who want to see Northern Ireland remain a part of Britain, nor the nationalists, who want unity with the Republic of Ireland, responded directly to the proposal in public.

But David Trimble, head of the Ulster Unionist Party and designated first minister of Northern Ireland, said, “I take exception to anyone doubting we are willing to work with other people, provided they are committed to democracy.”

Trimble surprised observers by bringing Jeffrey Donaldson, a hard-line Unionist member of the British Parliament, along with him to the negotiations--a hint that the Unionists are not in the mood to be flexible. Donaldson walked out of the peace negotiations last year and has opposed the agreement.

Sinn Fein negotiator Pat Doherty said there should be “no doubt” about Sinn Fein’s willingness to implement the peace agreement. And Sinn Fein’s chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness, warned that if no deal is achieved by Wednesday, the Northern Ireland Assembly elected last year will be suspended.

“If we arrive at that position . . . then the assembly will be gone,” McGuinness told BBC radio.

But Blair is asking both sides to overrule their radical wings and make concessions to avoid that fate. He insisted that the Wednesday deadline he has set is hard and fast and warned of trouble ahead if negotiators fail to break the deadlock. The Protestant Orange Order’s annual march in Portadown, often a flash point of violence, “hangs over us like a poison cloud,” Blair said. It is to be held July 4.

Emerging from Friday’s talks, Blair and Ahern said nationalists and Unionists remained committed to the accord and that some progress had been made, but problems remain. Blair said they are “committed to try to resolve them.”

A joint statement by the British and Irish governments said the Northern Ireland parties are “seized of the importance of the next few days in taking the peace process forward.”

Talks are to resume next week.