N. Ireland Assembly’s Power Temporarily Revoked

Britain suspended the Northern Ireland Assembly today in the latest bid to give rival political parties time to salvage the province’s tenuous peace process, which is under threat of collapse.

In an interview Friday evening, Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid described his decision to temporarily strip the province’s power-sharing assembly of its authority as the one option that minimizes the risk to the peace process.

The decision also provides the greatest opportunity for continued dialogue among Northern Ireland’s Roman Catholic and Protestant parties, he said.

“I watched TV pictures last night of the tragedy in Jerusalem of 15 innocent citizens massacred because of a failure to grasp the window of opportunity a couple of years ago,” Reid said at an earlier news conference. “No one in Ireland wants to go back to that.”

The suspension, which kicked in at midnight and is expected to last 24 hours, is largely a technical procedure that Reid employed to trigger a six-week period that will allow negotiations to continue.

Reid’s announcement capped 10 hectic days during which the Irish Republican Army confirmed that it had agreed to a plan for giving up its arms. The militants’ announcement, considered a breakthrough by the British and Irish governments, and other recent developments led Reid on Friday to describe Northern Ireland’s parties as “tantalizingly” close to an agreement.

His decision to suspend the assembly, however, infuriated Northern Ireland republicans. Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political arm, said the move called into doubt whether negotiations will resume.

“We consider today’s decision to be a body blow to the agreement,” Adams said. He was referring to the 1998 Good Friday peace accord, which seeks to end a decades-old conflict between Roman Catholics who are pushing for the province to become part of Ireland and Protestants who want to remain part of Britain.

Reid brushed off as sheer speculation suggestions that his decision could prompt the IRA to end its talks with an international disarmament commission and possibly even withdraw its offer to disarm.

Reid could have initiated a long-term suspension of the assembly or called for new elections, which could have further polarized the governing body.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is vacationing in Mexico, backed Reid’s decision.

“When we have come so far, I think most people would agree with both [the Irish and British] governments that we should allow the parties more time to try to bridge the remaining gaps,” Blair said.

Protestant politician John Taylor, deputy leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, described the suspension as unfortunate but said that his party cannot share power with “people who have not commenced the decommissioning of illegal arms.” The latest crisis was triggered when Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble resigned as Northern Ireland’s first minister July 1 over the arms issue, which has repeatedly frustrated efforts to fully implement the Good Friday accord.

In addition to the dispute over when the IRA will begin disarming, the parties also are debating details of a proposal floated by the Irish and British governments to reform Northern Ireland’s police force so that it includes more Catholics.

The hope is that negotiations will result in an agreement, which will pave the way for Trimble to return to his post.

The conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland cost more than 3,600 lives during a three-decade period.

One of the most infamous incidents--a 1998 bombing in the town of Omagh, which left 29 people dead--made headlines again Friday after family members of the victims launched a legal fight to gain compensation from five men allegedly linked to the Real IRA, a splinter paramilitary group believed to have carried out the attack.

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Times special correspondent William Graham in Belfast, Northern Ireland, contributed to this report.