N. Irish Peace Process Hit From Both Sides

The bid to rescue Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government suffered a double blow Tuesday when two Protestant paramilitary groups withdrew their support for negotiations and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said it is not possible to resolve the issue of Irish Republican Army disarmament before time runs out.

As the British and Irish governments mediated talks between the province’s Protestant and Roman Catholic political parties, the armed Ulster Freedom Fighters said it no longer supports the 1998 Good Friday peace accord, and a party linked to the Ulster Volunteer Force announced that it was leaving the bargaining table.

Both paramilitary groups insisted that they will continue to honor a cease-fire, although the Ulster Freedom Fighters have been implicated in recent attacks on Catholics.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, are trying to broker a deal on paramilitary disarmament, policing, British demilitarization and the continuation of Northern Ireland’s coalition government.

But the pro-British paramilitary groups said they cannot go along with further concessions to the IRA and its Sinn Fein political allies to save the peace process.

“We find it intolerable that Sinn Fein has gained concession after concession, yet there is still a growing erosion of our culture and our heritage,” the Ulster Freedom Fighters said in a statement.

In a separate move, a political party linked to the rival Ulster Volunteer Force withdrew from the talks at Weston Park, a secluded estate in central England, saying the IRA kept upping the ante for achieving disarmament.

“We have seen a consistent spiral where . . . the republican shopping list gets even longer,” said David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party.

Sinn Fein’s Adams responded with an angry speech in London in which he accused Blair of allowing IRA disarmament to become the stumbling block of the peace process. He noted that the outlawed Catholic paramilitary group has honored the cease-fire and that parts of the accord that are important to Catholics have not been implemented.

“If they genuinely want to take guns out of Irish politics, they need to understand that the arms issue can only be resolved as part of a genuine conflict-resolution process,” Adams sad. “This means it has to be dealt with as an objective of the peace process and not as a precondition.”

David Trimble, leader of Northern Ireland’s largest pro-British Protestant party, resigned July 1 as the province’s first minister over the IRA’s failure to get rid of its arsenal. A report by an independent commission overseeing disarmament subsequently confirmed that the IRA had not eliminated a single weapon or explained how it planned to do so.

Under the rules of the power-sharing government, the parties have until Aug. 12 to resolve the crisis and return Trimble to power, along with his Catholic deputy, Seamus Mallon.

If the parties fail to reach agreement, Britain may suspend the Northern Irish government or call new elections. In such a climate, it is unlikely that Protestants would elect enough pro-agreement representatives to form a new government with the Catholic parties, and the whole effort to end three decades of sectarian warfare could collapse.

The British and Irish governments appeared to have little room to maneuver between the hard-line Protestants’ demands to hold firm and Sinn Fein’s demands for British military cutbacks, the reform of Northern Ireland’s predominantly Protestant police force and the restoration of government institutions.

Sinn Fein and the IRA have come under pressure to disarm not only from Britain and the Protestants of Northern Ireland, but, more recently, also from its Catholic allies in the province and in the government of neighboring Ireland.

Protestant paramilitary groups also have refused to give up their weapons, insisting that the IRA must do so first. In his speech, Adams said they had attacked more than 100 Catholic homes, businesses and churches with gasoline bombs this year, shot to death two Catholics in recent weeks and blockaded Catholic children going to school.

Adams said Blair was not “facing up to the reality that the only threat to the process comes from [Protestant] loyalist guns.”

After Sinn Fein and Trimble’s Ulster Unionist Party had met for 90 minutes Tuesday, Adams said there is “no easy way to sort out these issues.” He said he does not believe the job can be done by the “arbitrary” deadline triggered by Trimble’s resignation.

Trimble responded by calling Adams’ speech “highly tendentious” and “a missed opportunity.”

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Special correspondent William Graham at Weston Park contributed to this report.