British Recoil As Ira Kills Two Cops New Prime Minister, Once Hopeful About Peace, Says The ‘Cynicism And Hypocrisy’ Of The Killings Are Sickening

Irish Republican Army assassins shot two policemen walking their beat in a quiet market town in Northern Ireland on Monday, killing them instantly - and with them hopes for an early peace.

“The whole street was in tears,” said Brid Rodgers, an official of a moderate Roman Catholic party in Lurgan, the small town near Belfast where the officers were shot in the head.

The government immediately broke off contacts with Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA.

Prime Minister Tony Blair issued a statement saying the “cynicism and hypocrisy” of those behind the killings “are sickening.”

“It is difficult to interpret this latest attack as anything but a signal that Sinn Fein and the IRA are not interested in peace and democracy,” he said. “There is obviously no question of a further meeting with Sinn Fein in these circumstances.”

Blair’s government had restored contact with Sinn Fein on May 21, three weeks after Blair defeated Conservative Prime Minister John Major in Britain’s national election.

Since Blair took office last month, two meetings have been held as part of a government initiative to draw Sinn Fein into stalled multiparty peace talks. There were no breakthroughs, and a third meeting was planned - but the government said Monday that is no longer in the cards.

“At the moment, we would not meet Sinn Fein under any circumstances,” said a visibly distraught Marjorie Mowlam, Britain’s new minister for Northern Ireland.

The IRA, which opposes British rule in Northern Ireland, claimed responsibility for the attack almost immediately in a phone call to a Belfast radio station using an established code word.

David Trimble, the leader of Northern Ireland’s largest pro-British political party, the Ulster Unionist Party, said Monday’s double murder should scotch any optimism that the IRA might be ready to lay down its arms after three decades of violence in which more than 3,000 people have died.

“We need to realize the nature of the beast we’re dealing with,” Trimble said.

“I am outraged by the callous murder by the IRA of two policemen in Northern Ireland; I condemn this brutal act of terrorism in the strongest possible terms,” President Clinton said in a statement.

“There can be no reason, no excuse for these vicious crimes,” he said.

He urged pro-British Protestants in Northern Ireland to avoid retaliation, saying that would only play into the hands of the IRA.

Clinton said the “true heroes and patriots in Northern Ireland are those working for reconciliation and peace.”

Even by the standards of a community inured to three decades of sectarian atrocity, Monday’s lunchtime attack was supremely cynical in its conception and uncompromisingly brutal in its execution, analysts said.

Many now expect a long, violent summer in a divided British province where the IRA has rejected repeated cease-fire appeals from Britain, Ireland and the United States.

Both the timing and the location of Monday’s attack were significant, in the analysts’ view. An annual summer parade season that often pits Protestant marchers against Catholic demonstrators is only a few weeks away, they noted. And the particularly contentious town of Portadown, site of a violent standoff over marching rights a year ago, is only about 10 miles from Lurgan.

The two killers walked up to the officers in the street and shot them in the head at close range before either had a chance to react, police said.

John Graham, 34, and David Andrew Johnston, 30, apparently were dead when they hit the sidewalk. Doctors sprinting to help from their office 100 feet away on the quiet side street could do nothing.

One officer was the father of three children, the other of two - all of them younger than 7, police said.

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams says he is committed to democratic principles but has consistently refused to condemn IRA terrorism.

In a variation of his customary reaction to violence, Adams told reporters Monday: “At a human level this (attack) diminishes us all, and it has to be a challenge to all of us who want to play a productive role.”

Sinn Fein says it speaks for the IRA but is not part of it, a position rejected by the British government. Blair, Irish Prime Minister John Bruton and President Clinton all insist that before Sinn Fein can be welcome at peace talks, there must be an unequivocal restoration of the cease-fire that the IRA ended last year.

Adams says Sinn Fein, which drew 16 percent of the vote in recent elections in Northern Ireland, has earned the right to participate without a cease-fire.