IRA Assails Britain, Quits Disarmament Talks

Northern Ireland plunged deeper into political crisis Tuesday when the Irish Republican Army pulled out of disarmament talks in a reprisal for Britain’s suspension of the power-sharing government in the province last week.

The IRA said in a statement issued from Belfast, the provincial capital, that it had broken off all contact with the international commission overseeing disarmament and withdrawn all offers it had put on the table since November, when the guerrillas appointed a representative to meet with the head of the commission, retired Canadian Gen. John de Chastelain.

The group accused Britain and pro-British unionists in Northern Ireland of seeking “a military victory” over republicans who support a united Ireland. While declaring that such a victory is impossible, it didn’t threaten to break its long-standing cease-fire.

“Both the British government and the leadership of the Ulster Unionist Party have rejected the propositions put to the [disarmament commission] by our representative,” the statement read. “They obviously have no desire to deal with the issue of arms except on their own terms.

“Those who have made the political process conditional on the decommissioning of silenced IRA guns are responsible for the current crisis in the peace process.”

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, are scheduled to meet in London today to try to keep the peace process from further unraveling. They will also hold separate meetings with the IRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein; the Social Democratic and Labor Party, a moderate Roman Catholic group; and the pro-British Ulster Unionists, the largest Protestant party in Northern Ireland.

Britain and Ireland have been at odds in recent days over whether the IRA’s eleventh-hour offer to De Chastelain on Friday contained enough substance to have averted a suspension of the government soon after.

Britain’s Northern Ireland secretary, Peter Mandelson, suspended the province’s 10-week-old government at midnight Friday and reinstated direct British rule in the province because of the IRA’s failure to begin disarming. London also took the action in response to Ulster Unionist chief David Trimble’s threat to resign from the provincial government he headed.

The IRA accused Britain of bowing to Trimble’s pressure.

“The British secretary of state [Mandelson] has reintroduced the unionist veto by suspending the political institutions,” the IRA statement said. “This has changed the context in which we appointed a representative to meet with the [disarmament commission] and has created a deeper crisis.”

In its proposal Friday, the IRA said it would consider putting its weapons “beyond use” if the 1998 Good Friday peace accord was fully implemented and if the “roots” of the conflict were eliminated--a reference to British troops stationed in Northern Ireland.

De Chastelain and the Irish government said the statement represented a significant step forward on the part of the IRA, but Trimble and the British government said it didn’t go far enough to prevent the suspension of the government.

Trimble said he wants the IRA to outline exactly how and when it will disarm before he returns to a government with Sinn Fein. The IRA is insisting on a government before it will return to the issue of guns.

The IRA’s decision to break off contact with the disarmament commission removes that forum as a possible means for resolving the impasse.

Under the terms of the peace accord, the British and Irish governments are to lead a review of the peace process with the political parties involved whenever there is a stalemate.

But a majority of the members of Sinn Fein’s executive council have indicated that they don’t even want to enter into a review with the unionists; such an impasse would leave the entire process in dangerous limbo. Sinn Fein leaders are to meet this weekend to decide.

The view from Dublin, the Irish capital, is that power must be restored to the Northern Ireland government as soon as possible.

“We hope the suspension would be temporary,” an Irish government official said. “If we are not able to get the institutions up again soon, the Good Friday agreement could unravel.”

He said that the IRA’s statement Tuesday was “not a huge surprise or a shock, but it does make things more difficult.”

The governments apparently had been expecting the announcement since Sunday.

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams emerged from a meeting with Mandelson on Tuesday afternoon looking grim-faced and saying that republicans had “seen the failure of politics.”

Adams indicated that he had no more room to maneuver, and the IRA’s announcement followed shortly thereafter.

One Sinn Fein participant in the meeting described it as “one of the worst ever in the peace process. Sitting across the table from Mr. Mandelson, it appeared that he was not listening and was naive about the tremendous problems” caused by the suspension of the government.

Sinn Fein says the suspension is a violation of the peace accord and is illegal. The party has accused unionists of causing the peace process to limp from crisis to crisis.

“This is one crisis we may not be able to get through,” the Sinn Fein source said.

Special correspondent William Graham in Belfast contributed to this report.