Trimble Reelected as Chief of Party

The leader of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government, David Trimble, was reelected as chief of his divided Ulster Unionist Party on Saturday on the strength of his demand for immediate Irish Republican Army disarmament.

Trimble has threatened to resign as first minister July 1 and to bring the Protestant-Roman Catholic government to a standstill unless the IRA begins to give up its stockpiled weapons under the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement--an ultimatum the IRA’s political allies in the Sinn Fein party have rejected.

“We do want decommissioning. We do want peace. We do want devolution. We do want accountable democracy,” Trimble said. “We are prepared to shoulder a considerable burden, but we can’t carry it alone.”

Trimble’s anti-agreement opponents within the Ulster Unionists decided not to challenge his leadership of the party before the July 1 deadline, and so he ran unchallenged despite the important losses the party suffered in this month’s parliamentary and local elections to a hard-line Protestant party and Sinn Fein.

Last week, the British and Irish governments negotiated with Northern Ireland’s Protestant and Catholic parties to try to resolve the disarmament issue, but thus far they have failed to find a solution. The strengthening of the extremes--and weakening of the moderates--in the general election has encouraged both sides to dig in their heels.

The political crisis follows several days of sectarian street violence in the north of the provincial capital, Belfast, in which Catholic children had to be escorted to school through a Protestant area, and pipe bombs and gunshots were traded.

The British government announced Friday that it plans to send an additional 1,600 troops to Northern Ireland in anticipation of the annual “marching season,” when parades by Protestants commemorating centuries-old battlefield victories over Catholics heighten sectarian tensions and often lead to clashes. The government said it also has borrowed two water cannons from Belgium.

“There are assumptions you can make,” said Michael McGimpsey, a Trimble ally. “David Trimble will resign on the 1st of July, and thereafter there will be a crisis in the process. I think it will continue to be focused on the republicans because of their inability to live up to their promises.”

Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness, who serves as education minister in the provincial government, said, “It’s a bit rich for people to be focusing on guns that have been silent for the last seven years when we are witnessing attacks by people who are heart-set on destroying the Good Friday agreement.”

McGuinness said he doubted that the arms issue can be resolved in time to prevent Trimble’s resignation next weekend.

The last time it looked as if Trimble would quit over the disarmament issue, in February 2000, the British government suspended Northern Ireland’s administration indefinitely while an interim agreement was hammered out in which the IRA vowed to put its weapons “completely and verifiably beyond use.”

The group has since allowed international observers to inspect its secret weapons depots, but Protestant leaders say that this is insufficient and that the IRA must get rid of the guns and explosives.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair appears disinclined to suspend the government again, and both British and Irish leaders seem at a loss for a solution.

If Trimble resigns, the parties will have a six-week grace period in which to seek a settlement and recall the government without holding new elections. It is generally believed that neither Trimble nor another pro-agreement Protestant could win election by the Protestant majority to lead the power-sharing government.

*

Special correspondent William Graham in Belfast contributed to this report.