Rival N. Ireland Parties Are Deadlocked

The British and Irish governments, seeking to extricate Northern Ireland’s peace process from a deepening crisis, failed Wednesday to narrow the divisions between key parties in the British province’s suspended power-sharing administration.

As they departed British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s London residence, the rival leaders of the Ulster Unionist Party and Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, traded angry accusations over Britain’s decision last week to strip authority from the Protestant-Roman Catholic government in Belfast.

“We’ve come such a long way, I simply cannot believe that we are going to let this chance slip away,” Blair said.

Northern Ireland’s four-party coalition took shape just two months ago as envisaged under the 1998 Good Friday peace accord. After Wednesday’s deadlocked talks, it looked unlikely to return to power soon.

Sinn Fein emphasized that the IRA would make no disarmament commitments until the party regained its two posts within the 12-member Cabinet.

“At the moment, the Good Friday agreement is lying in a wastepaper bin. The British government needs to get it back out, put it back together again and get serious about the process of conflict resolution,” said Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness, a former IRA commander who was education minister in the Cabinet.

But Ulster Unionist chief David Trimble, the Protestant who agreed to form the administration in expectation that the IRA would disarm in response, said his supporters wouldn’t put up with resuming power-sharing with Sinn Fein until the IRA made a firm commitment.

The Good Friday accord anticipated complete disarmament by the IRA, along with pro-British paramilitary groups, by May.

The IRA, which is 31 months into a cease-fire, has never promised it would scrap its stockpiled weapons in cooperation with the province’s independent disarmament commission.

On Tuesday, the IRA broke off talks with the group in retaliation for Britain’s resumption of direct rule.