IRA Arms Offer in Doubt, Ally Warns

In stripping the Northern Ireland Assembly of its authority over the weekend, the British government succeeded in buying additional time for opposing political parties to resuscitate the province’s faltering search for peace.

But it became increasingly clear Sunday that the controversial one-day suspension was not without consequences--foremost among them the doubts it raised about whether the Irish Republican Army will continue to participate in the peace process.

Britain’s Northern Ireland secretary, John Reid, ordered Saturday’s 24-hour suspension of the Assembly for essentially procedural reasons: It triggered a six-week period to allow negotiations between the province’s feuding political parties to continue. Northern Ireland remains split by Protestants who want to remain part of Britain and Roman Catholics who want to join Ireland.

But Reid’s decision angered Sinn Fein, the political arm of the IRA, and party leaders continued to take issue Sunday with the British government’s intervention. Martin McGuinness, the chief negotiator for Sinn Fein, fed speculation that, as a result of the suspension, the Catholic guerrilla group might even withdraw its offer to give up its arms.

McGuinness said the act may have “jeopardized” the IRA’s latest pledge to place its weapons “beyond use.” The group confirmed last week that it has been holding talks with an international disarmament commission and that it has agreed to a method for parting with its weapons.

Speaking at a rally to commemorate the 20th anniversary of a hunger strike in which 10 IRA prisoners died, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said, “Behind the soft words, really what is being opened up is a six- or seven-week period in which the British government and unionists are going to try to put pressure on republicans to move to resolve issues on British or unionist terms.”

Adams rejected assertions by Reid that Northern Ireland’s political parties are “tantalizingly” close to reaching an agreement.

The latest crisis in the province’s decades-old conflict began when David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, stepped down last month as the Assembly’s first minister over the IRA’s failure to disarm. The power vacuum forced Reid to either suspend the Assembly long-term, call new elections or order a brief suspension.

On Sunday, Reid defended his decision to take the latter course, saying the parties now have more of a chance to resolve their differences.

“I certainly hope that nobody walks away,” Reid said.

Keeping the IRA engaged in disarmament, or “decommissioning,” negotiations is one of a number of challenges facing those in search of peace in Northern Ireland. Another area of potential conflict concerns police reform.

The British and Irish governments are expected to publish--as early as this week--their plan for how a set of proposed police reforms can be implemented. Integrating Catholics into the province’s Protestant-dominated force is a central issue.

Representatives of key political parties have been allowed to glimpse the plan, and some are concerned that the proposal’s public unveiling will anger some Protestants who may think the reforms go too far. What role Catholics with past ties to paramilitary groups will be allowed to play in the revamped force and on accompanying police boards is expected to come under particular scrutiny.

“I’m sure there is going to be a negative reaction,” said Paul Bew, a professor of Irish politics at Queens University in Belfast, the provincial capital. “The question is how negative and whether the public mood can be altered again if decommissioning came shortly thereafter.”

Sinn Fein, along with the Social Democratic and Labor Party--the moderate Catholic nationalist element in the coalition government--is demanding the release of the police implementation plan as a condition for backing any larger peace deal. The British and Irish governments floated the package earlier this month in a bid to compel the IRA to begin disarming.

Separating the IRA from its arms has been a recurring stumbling block in implementing the 1998 Good Friday peace accord, which seeks to end decades of violence estimated to have claimed 3,600 lives through bullets, bombs and beatings. Protestant leaders have refused to continue participating in Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government with Sinn Fein unless the IRA gives up its arsenal.