Disarmament Delay Threatens New Government in N. Ireland

After just two months in office, Northern Ireland’s historic power-sharing government appeared headed for a breakdown Monday over the issue of Irish Republican Army disarmament.

An international disarmament commission was due to inform the British and Irish governments late Monday that paramilitary groups in the province have not started getting rid of their arsenals.

The gloomy report--to be made public in the coming days--is expected to provoke the British government to suspend the Northern Ireland Assembly and resume direct rule temporarily to prevent the resignation of First Minister David Trimble.

“It’s no good pretending this is looking wonderful,” said a British government official who declined to be identified. “The point of a suspension is to go into a review of the peace process and try to save it. If Trimble resigns, there’s no way back.”

Northern Ireland’s Protestant and Roman Catholic political parties formed the power-sharing government in December after Trimble’s Ulster Unionist Party reluctantly abandoned its long-standing “no guns, no government” policy and agreed to sit in a Cabinet with the IRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein, ahead of disarmament.

But to secure his party’s support for the policy shift, Trimble vowed to quit the new government if the IRA had not begun to shed its weapons by February. He handed his party a postdated resignation letter as a guarantee.

Unilateral Deadline Enrages Sinn Fein, IRA

The maneuver infuriated Sinn Fein and the IRA, who insisted that the Unionist leader had no right to impose unilateral deadlines. The 1998 Good Friday agreement to end 30 years of sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland calls for disarmament by May.

In January, the British government announced that it would proceed with reforms of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, Northern Ireland’s militarized police force, as required by the peace accord.

The announcement was clearly timed to encourage the IRA to make at least a token gesture toward disarmament. But it apparently had no effect on republicans, who responded that the British army had yet to pull its troops away from the border of Ireland, where the IRA has a strong base of support.

As February approached without signs of movement on the part of the IRA, all sides engaged in a flurry of negotiations searching for ways to keep the government intact. None apparently had been found by Monday night.

“I don’t think any rabbits are going to be pulled out of hats,” the British official said.

Canadian Gen. John de Chastelain, who chairs the disarmament panel, was to deliver his report by midnight Monday. It was expected to state that the IRA had named a representative to deal with the panel but had not started putting guns on the table.

The governments were expected to study the findings before making the contents public today or Wednesday.

If no diplomatic solution can be found, Britain’s Northern Ireland secretary, Peter Mandelson, is expected to introduce legislation in the House of Commons to retake control of Northern Ireland. He must do so by next Monday, when the executive council of Trimble’s party is scheduled to meet, officials said. Trimble’s party council is to meet the following Saturday.

Peace Process May Be Jeopardized

British and Irish officials fear that a suspension of the Northern Ireland Assembly could strengthen opponents of the peace process on both sides, who then could make it difficult to get the government up and running again.

Trimble was still urging the IRA to take action late Monday.

“It would be misguided to think that words would be sufficient,” Trimble said on British radio and television.

“We actually jumped first and took a very substantial risk. We only did it with a very narrow margin in terms of the [Unionist] party,” he said.

“It’s time for other people to be as bold, to take the same sort of risk we did, not to be hiding away,” he said, adding that his party was “pretty close to running out of road.”

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams argued that the fact that the IRA’s guns have been “silent” during a six-year cease-fire speaks for itself.

But even Adams seemed to realize that his argument rang hollow over the weekend, when he admitted that he simply could not deliver IRA disarmament right now and warned that the IRA will never disarm if the Northern Ireland government is suspended.

The Irish News, a Catholic newspaper, called for the IRA to begin disarmament in a front-page editorial last week, and Catholic leaders from the nationalist Social Democratic and Labor Party have echoed that call, saying Sinn Fein and the IRA are breathing life into “dinosaurs” who oppose the peace process.

“Dinosaurs” and democrats, meanwhile, met in a session of the Northern Ireland Assembly on Monday to hear Education Minister Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein take questions from his fellow lawmakers for the first--and possibly last--time as a member of the Cabinet.

McGuinness, a onetime IRA leader, answered questions from former enemies about departmental budgets and building expenses, high school exams and problems with underachievers.

His Sinn Fein colleague, Health Minister Bairbre de Brun, answered questions from the floor about hospital services--in Gaelic. Opponents of the peace process from the Democratic Unionist Party hissed and grumbled loudly in return but yielded to parliamentary procedure and let her speak. They even addressed her as “the minister.”

When De Brun responded to one hostile questioner that she had indeed requested that the British flag be taken down from atop Health Ministry buildings, Unionists shouted “Shame! Shame!”

But the hail of fire was only verbal, a demonstration of how, for two months at least, pro-British Protestants and Catholic nationalists seeking a united Ireland were able to rule their divided province together.