N. Ireland Group Abandons Its Truce

The Ulster Volunteer Force, a major outlawed Protestant group in Northern Ireland, has abandoned its 11-year-old truce and is an enemy of the peace again, Britain said in a statement effective today.

The move followed three nights of Protestant riots that ravaged much of Belfast and other towns. Police commanders said the Ulster Volunteer Force and a larger Protestant paramilitary group, the Ulster Defense Assn., attacked police officers and British troops with assault-rifle fire and homemade grenades in the worst Protestant riots in nearly a decade.

Britain’s secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Peter Hain, said he had evidence that the Ulster Volunteer Force, an underground group ostensibly bolstering Northern Ireland’s 1998 Good Friday peace accord with a cease-fire, committed four killings this summer and attacked police and soldiers this week.

Hain’s Northern Ireland Office said in a statement Tuesday that the group members’ violence “amounted to a breakdown in their cease-fire” and meant that, as of midnight, Britain no longer accepted it as valid.

But Hain said Britain would continue to recognize the validity of the Ulster Defense Assn. cease-fire, partly because that group had not been linked to any recent killings.

The rioting left at least 60 police and several dozen civilians wounded. The trigger -- British authorities’ refusal Saturday to allow Protestants to parade along the edge of Catholic west Belfast -- capped years of growing Protestant opposition to the 1998 peace accord.

Police arrested 63 people, most of whom have been charged with crimes that include hijacking and attempted murder.