Peace Talks Hurt By Report Ira Behind Belfast Killings Fresh Calls To Remove Sinn Fein From Table

In a statement that pushed the Northern Ireland peace effort further toward crisis, the Belfast chief of police has asserted that the Irish Republican Army was involved in two killings of civilians this week.

The British and Irish governments, which reported the finding Friday, immediately said they would now have to decide whether it was grounds for expelling the IRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein, from the negotiations. A decision is expected by Monday, when the talks are to move to Dublin for three days.

Protestant groups have been pressing for the expulsion of Sinn Fein since the killings, insisting that the IRA was behind the attacks. But such a decision would be a serious setback to the talks; officials here are virtually unanimous in saying that without Sinn Fein, the negotiations are unlikely to reach a meaningful settlement.

“It’s a very serious matter,” the prime minister of Ireland, Bertie Ahern, said Friday afternoon. He said he had learned of the police findings, by the chief of the Royal Ulster Constabulary, Ronnie Flanagan, in a telephone conversation Friday night with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain. Ahern said he had also discussed the situation with President Clinton.

John Hume, the prominent mainstream Catholic leader in the north, said Flanagan’s report was “a serious setback” for the peace effort.

The police report was made public, in part, by Mo Mowlam, the British secretary for Northern Ireland, who quoted the chief constable as saying, “The IRA were involved in these murders.”

Officials fear that if Sinn Fein is expelled, the IRA will resume its campaign of violence in the province. That could provoke Protestant paramilitaries to retaliate with attacks in the North and in the Irish Republic.

But if the governments decide against expelling Sinn Fein, that could provoke a walkout by Protestant negotiators at the talks, which had recently begun to deal seriously with proposals for a new political structure for Northern Ireland.

Sinn Fein, for its part, continued to insist that it was not representing the IRA at the talks, an assertion that virtually no one believes.

After years of bitter dispute, Sinn Fein was finally admitted to the talks last September after the IRA declared a cease-fire and Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, renounced violence. All sides in the talks have made the same pledge as a condition of participation.

Thursday night, in a move intended to help Sinn Fein hold its place at the bargaining table, the Irish Republican Army issued a statement saying, “Contrary to speculation surrounding recent killings in Belfast, the IRA cessation of military operations remains intact.”

But in IRA parlance, the execution of drug dealers is not normally a military operation, and the statement did not assert directly that the group had no involvement in the killing this week of a reputed drug dealer, Brendan Campbell, who was a Catholic, and of Robert Dougan, a Protestant member of the outlawed Ulster Defense Association, a paramilitary group. Protestant leaders have said Campbell was killed in an internal Republican struggle to control drug trafficking.

The governments’ decision on Sinn Fein’s role in future talks was further complicated on Thursday when the British indicated that they and the Irish would soon reinstate in the talks a small Protestant party, the Ulster Democrats, which represents a paramilitary group called the Ulster Freedom Fighters.