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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Blair Takes Heat For Handshake Protestants Denounce Meeting With Sinn Fein Leader

Ray Moseley Chicago Tribune

Tony Blair shook hands Monday with Gerry Adams, the first time a British prime minister has met a leader of Sinn Fein in 76 years, but it happened in a private room without cameras present to record the moment.

Angry Protestants shouted abuse at the prime minister and jostled him when he later visited a Protestant neighborhood in east Belfast. A Northern Ireland Protestant leader also denounced him for giving respectability to the head of the Irish Republican Army’s political wing.

Blair’s meeting with Adams took place at Stormont Castle in Belfast, where the prime minister called on leaders of the eight parties taking part in Northern Ireland peace talks. Sinn Fein recently was admitted to the talks for the first time - after an IRA cease-fire last summer.

A British spokesman said after the meeting that Blair had told Sinn Fein leaders and other parties to the talks they have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to shape history.

“If we don’t seize the opportunity now, we may not see it again in my lifetime,” Blair was quoted as saying. “It’s a very rare thing for humanity to make sense of history, but that’s exactly what we’ve got to do. You either end up as victims of your history or you make sense of it.”

Officials said Blair came away from the meetings encouraged and sensing a real political will to make progress toward a settlement.

But Adams said he had stressed his commitment to a united Ireland and told Blair he hoped he would be the last British prime minister “with jurisdiction in Ireland.”

He played down the meeting, saying: “Well, I have shaken hands with many people.”

Earlier, Blair visited a strongly Protestant area of east Belfast, and police had to usher him into a bank when a hostile crowd surged forward, with some people shouting abuse.

One woman flung a rubber glove at Blair and hit him in the chest with it. She said she had planned to wear the glove to shake hands with Blair to show her disgust at his handshake with Adams.

Ken Maginnis, security spokesman of the Protestant Ulster Unionist Party, said it was “demeaning for the prime minister of the United Kingdom to be meeting unreconstructed terrorists like Gerry Adams.”

He suggested Blair wanted no photos of the meeting so there would be no such record of “the folly of what he has done if, as many of us expect, the IRA returns to violence.”

The Unionists are angry the IRA has not been required to surrender its weapons as part of the price of Sinn Fein taking part in the talks. But Adams told the Times of London, in advance of the meeting, it would be “a step toward bringing about a new relationship between the people of this island.”

Not since David Lloyd George met Irish republican leaders Eamon de Valera and Michael Collins in 1921 had a British prime minister shaken hands with Sinn Fein representatives.

Blair is anxious to see some movement in the long-stalled peace talks and has made concessions to Sinn Fein his predecessor, John Major, declined to consider.

Speaking to reporters before the meeting, Blair challenged the Northern Ireland people to take risks for peace.

“You can always go back to the old ways of fighting, violence and despair and no future for the people of Northern Ireland,” he said, “or we can decide, ‘Yes, we will take risks but we will take risks fully consistent with the principle of consent, of nonviolence and of democracy.”’