Ulster Unionists Set to Bring Down Government

Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government headed for collapse as moderate Catholics refused to support Protestant demands for expelling Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army.

David Trimble, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate who leads the major Protestant party, said his Ulster Unionists “have no choice” but to bring down the government to protest the IRA’s refusal to disarm, which, like power sharing, was a goal of the 1998 peace accord.

Trimble, who resigned in July as the administration’s Protestant leader, said the three Ulster Unionists still in the Cabinet would withdraw from duties this week, then resign next week. Power would then revert to the British government.