N. Ireland Peace Talks Adjourned

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — U.S. negotiator George J. Mitchell announced Saturday that the Northern Ireland peace talks had been adjourned until Wednesday.

“The parties have agreed to continue the review with meetings among themselves on Monday and Tuesday, and I will return to meet with them on Wednesday,” he said in a statement.

Mitchell warned against false optimism and said significant differences remained between pro-British Ulster Unionists and Irish republicans. But he said they were making “a sincere and serious effort to bridge those differences.”

“In view of the gravity of what is at stake, I believe it justified to provide this brief additional time for further discussion,” he said.

Mitchell has struggled for seven weeks to broker a deal between the parties, which are deadlocked over guerrilla disarmament and creation of new governing structures.

Unionist leader David Trimble and Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army’s political wing, have been polarized for more than a year over the peace process.

Support for the talks came from Roelf Meyer, the South African government’s chief negotiator during the country’s peace process.

“I don’t think one must now be too optimistic about an immediate solution or an immediate breakdown,” said Meyer, who arrived several days ago. “It seems to be that the parties are talking. I feel mildly optimistic about what I observe from the outside.”

Mitchell is struggling to broker a compromise that would give the green light to a full implementation of the 1998 Good Friday accord to end 30 years of sectarian warfare.

Although the Ulster Unionist Party and Sinn Fein accuse each other of reneging on the accord, both Trimble and Adams say they have not given up.

Trimble tried to reassure republicans ahead of Saturday’s talks. “We want to see the new relationships envisaged in the agreement working well. We want to usher in the new millennium with a new Northern Ireland,” he wrote in a newspaper.

“The agreement is the best way to achieve all this. We must not contemplate failure because the past must never revisit our future.”