New N. Ireland Government Delayed

Britain on Monday postponed the establishment of a new Northern Ireland government, saying that a three-week delay will give Protestants and Roman Catholics time to resolve their dispute over disarming the Irish Republican Army.

The deadline for transferring power to a Northern Ireland executive was pushed back from Wednesday to the week of March 28, still in time for the first anniversary of the Good Friday agreement to end three decades of sectarian warfare.

But Gerry Adams, leader of the IRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein, asserted that the peace process is in a “crisis, big time.” And even Britain’s Northern Ireland secretary, Marjorie “Mo” Mowlam, who announced the delay, warned that success is not assured.

“I am only losing three weeks, but I think it is three weeks which, if well spent, will deliver progress,” Mowlam said. “I can’t guarantee that it will work, and they ought to know there is no Plan B, but I think it is a much more rational way forward.”

The two sides, along with the British and Irish governments, have been trying for weeks to break an impasse over the weapons issue.

Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble, who is Northern Ireland’s designated first minister, refuses to allow Sinn Fein to take its two seats on a 12-member ruling executive unless the IRA starts coughing up weapons to prove that its cease-fire is permanent.

Sinn Fein responds that the Protestants are making demands that were not part of the peace agreement in order to humiliate the IRA and wreck the accord.

The peace agreement committed Sinn Fein members to use “whatever influence they may have” to secure complete disarmament of the IRA by May 2000, but it did not say when the process should begin.

Both sides are under pressure from hard-liners in their own ranks not to give in, and they seem to be looking to President Clinton to break the deadlock. Most of the major players in the conflict are traveling to Washington next week for St. Patrick’s Day celebrations.

But officials familiar with the negotiations feared that neither side will budge.

“I think there is a real crisis to the extent that no one knows what the solution is and there have been serious attempts by all parties to solve this,” said an Irish government official.

“The two sides are so far apart they can’t find a compromise. . . . U.S. intervention has always been constructive, but at the end of the day, the problem is Sinn Fein’s and David Trimble’s, and they have to sort it out themselves. If neither side is prepared to move, there’s nothing Clinton can do,” he said.

The delay in forming a Northern Ireland government had been expected. British and Irish officials recently said the Wednesday deadline was unrealistic.

“Moving off that deadline means we are into crisis, big time,” Adams said shortly before Mowlam announced the postponement.

“The context and seriousness of the situation should not be underestimated. If we reduce this to a game, the only ones who can win are the rejectionists and those who don’t want the agreement to work,” he said.

“It’s also about trying to force Sinn Fein out of the political process. These people visualize the IRA being forced back to war,” Adams said, adding that this was not a threat.

Mowlam made the declaration in Dublin, Ireland, where she and Irish Foreign Minister David Andrews signed treaties to create several institutions that are key elements of the peace accord.

Anglo-Irish bodies would bring together lawmakers in both countries, while an Irish North-South council would coordinate policies between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.

But the treaties cannot become operative before a new power-sharing government is established.

Times special correspondent Martina Purdy in Belfast, Northern Ireland, contributed to this report.