IRA's transition from violence to democracy must continue

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- The Irish Republican Army must deliver "a full transition from violence to democracy," British Prime Minister Tony Blair declared Thursday during a mission designed to rebuild Protestant support for Northern Ireland's peace accord.

The 1998 accord led to a Catholic-Protestant government for this British territory that is again threatening to unravel because of tensions between the coalition government's major Protestant party, the Ulster Unionists, and the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party.

The Protestant leader of the four-party government, Ulster Unionist chief David Trimble, warned that his party could withdraw once again -- threatening the collapse of power-sharing -- if Britain doesn't toughen its policy toward breaches of the IRA's 1997 cease-fire.

Trimble, citing police claims, said the IRA was involved in intelligence-gathering and weapons development in preparation for resuming hostilities against Northern Ireland and its British links.

Sinn Fein rejected his accusations.

The IRA had waged a decades-long fight to abolish British rule in Northern Ireland, agreeing to a cease-fire in 1997 that paved the way for the current government.

Blair, who undertook the one-day diplomatic mission with Ireland's prime minister, Bertie Ahern, agreed with Trimble that the IRA was still involved in violent acts.

Blair said he had agreed to present ideas later this month for bolstering Trimble, whose willingness to share power with Sinn Fein has badly divided his party and fueled support for Protestant rivals committed to wrecking the 1998 pact.

'Violence to democracy'

The British leader said Sinn Fein and the IRA appeared to want to participate "in a democracy that can maintain a certain level of violence. That is not acceptable. Transition means transition -- full transition from violence to democracy."

Noting that the IRA had made important steps, particularly by starting to scrap weapons, Blair said: "What the unionist community rightly demand is that that process of transition is continuing and hasn't stopped."

The Ulster Unionists left the talks after speaking to Blair and Ahern at Hillsborough Castle outside Belfast.

Sinn Fein leaders accused Trimble of trying to impose a new deadline to destroy the power-sharing government.

The power-sharing coalition took shape in December 1999, when Trimble dropped his long-standing demand for the IRA to begin disarming beforehand.

Britain has already shut down the Trimble-led government twice because the IRA refused to start disarming as the 1998 accord proposed.

Most recently, Trimble resigned as government leader in July and only narrowly won re-election in October after the IRA secretly scrapped a cache of weapons in cooperation with disarmament chiefs. A second disarmament act was confirmed in April.

Despite those moves, many belive that the IRA has stockpiled several tons of guns, ammunition, explosives and detonators.

The power-sharing government cannot operate without support from the two largest British Protestant and Irish Catholic parties in Northern Ireland's legislature. Currently those two parties are, respectively, the Ulster Unionists and the Social Democratic and Labor Party.

But recent election results suggest that the two parties' hard-line rivals -- Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists and Sinn Fein -- could become the largest Protestant and Catholic parties, respectively, in the next legislative election in May 2003.

Analysts agree that if this were to happen, no power-sharing government could be formed.