N. Ireland Leaders Stress Willingness to Deal

Leaders on both sides of Northern Ireland’s sectarian divide on Friday assured President Clinton that they are determined to revive the province’s peace process, but lengthy St. Patrick’s Day meetings at the White House failed to break a 5-week-old impasse.

“The message that we were delivering to the president was that we believe that all the parties, in spite of all the difficulties and all of the traumas that we’ve had . . . are committed to the full implementation of the Good Friday agreement,” Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern told reporters outside the White House, referring to the landmark 1998 accord.

“There is no other alternative, there is no ‘B’ plan, there are no other suggestions even,” Ahern said.

The accord, mediated by U.S. envoy George J. Mitchell, established a power-sharing government for the British province, with proportional representation for Protestant unionists who want to remain part of Britain and Roman Catholic republicans who want to join the Republic of Ireland to the south. But self-rule was suspended last month in a dispute about the refusal of the Irish Republican Army and some other paramilitary organizations to surrender their weapons.

David Trimble, the unionist leader who headed the power-sharing government, said his party is prepared to reinstate the Good Friday accord but that it needs a commitment from the IRA to begin disarming first, something the IRA has refused to give.

“I am prepared to go back to the party and say, ‘Let us have a fresh sequence,’ ” Trimble said. “But I can’t do that just simply in the abstract. I can only do that in circumstances where there’s good reason to believe that this time it will work, and at the moment, I’m not in a position to do that.

“If I go back to the party now and I say, ‘Let us try again,’ then inevitably people are going to say to me: ‘Well, it didn’t work last time. Why do you think it’s going to work this time?’ ” he said, adding, “And at the moment, I have no answer to that question.”

The Irish leaders were in Washington for St. Patrick’s Day celebrations. Last year a similar Washington gathering produced commitments to try to put the peace process back on track. But U.S. officials said no similar agreement came this year.

“The president found a real determination to find a way to move forward,” a White House official said. “Any time the leaders come together under one roof, there is a dynamic created that helps the process. But I wouldn’t say there was a breakthrough today.”

The Clinton administration and the governments of the Irish Republic and Britain all are trying to smooth over the disputes among the Northern Ireland factions.

Ahern said the meetings in Washington were the second step in a process that began last week when he conferred in London with British Prime Minister Tony Blair. He said he would report to Blair next week concerning the Washington talks.

Speaking at a White House ceremony after Ahern presented him with an Irish crystal bowl filled with shamrocks, Clinton said the Good Friday pact “remains the very best hope we have ever had for achieving peace, and I still believe it will succeed.”