Ira Move Renews Hope For Cease-Fire Sinn Fein Accepts Invitation To Peace Talks With British

Irish Republican Army supporters accepted the British government’s invitation for a meeting, raising hopes Saturday of a renewed cease-fire in the IRA’s violent campaign against British rule.

Gerry Adams and Pat Doherty, leaders of the IRA-allied Sinn Fein party, also talked Saturday in Dublin with advisers to Irish Prime Minister John Bruton. No details immediately emerged, but Bruton said he had authorized the first official contact in nearly a year “with a view to seeing if there is an imminent cease-fire.”

The meeting followed British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s suggestion Friday that Sinn Fein talk with his senior Northern Ireland advisers in Belfast.

Blair’s invitation represented a break from longstanding British policy not to meet Sinn Fein unless the outlawed IRA renewed its cease-fire. The overture offers the best chance for improving relations since the IRA abandoned its last truce 15 months ago.

Adams, whose party has been barred from multiparty negotiations on Northern Ireland’s future because of the violence, said he and the new Cabinet minister responsible for governing Northern Ireland, Mo Mowlam, had already exchanged letters.

The British-Sinn Fein meeting should proceed “without delay,” Adams said.

Bruton’s government, facing a tough re-election battle in the Irish Republic on June 6, cut off face-to-face meetings after the IRA killed an Irish police officer last June.

xxxx
Major also tried talks The previous Conservative government of John Major began meeting Sinn Fein at the same level 100 days after the IRA cease-fire of Sept. 1, 1994. But Major broke off all direct contact when the IRA ended the truce with a 1-ton truck bomb that killed two men in London on Feb. 9, 1996.