N. Ireland Talks Open In Turmoil Ira Figure Barred; Mitchell’s Role Fought

Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams showed up, got turned away, and made a speech about it. His Protestant counterpart, the Rev. Ian Paisley, threatened to walk out.

It was the raucous, bumpy start that nearly everybody had predicted for Northern Ireland’s historic peace talks.

The unprecedented peace negotiations have the daunting task of bringing together Catholic nationalists and Protestant loyalists in a political settlement that will end the bloody, intermittent guerrilla warfare - known as The Troubles - spanning the 75 years of Northern Ireland’s history as a British province.

Two issues threatened to scuttle the talks just as they were getting under way. One was the continued absence of an IRA cease-fire, which has kept Adams - who staged a protest outside the conference gates - and Sinn Fein away from the talks. The second issue was a controversy over the seating of former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell as chairman.

Led by the outspoken Paisley, the veteran Northern Ireland Protestant leader, hardline unionists loyal to Britain maintained Mitchell was in America’s Irish-American “camp” and could not lead the talks fairly. Mitchell is Catholic.

The dispute was overshadowed by a knottier problem Monday.

Sinn Fein, the political wing of the outlawed Irish Republican Army, has been denied a seat at the talks by both the British and Irish governments until a new IRA cease-fire is declared. Yet any settlement is essentially meaningless without the participation of Sinn Fein and the IRA.

“We have a right to be in there with the other parties,” said Adams as he stood outside the meeting site on the outskirts of Belfast.

“We came here to assert the right of our electorate,” Adams said, referring to his party’s strong showing during elections preceding the talks.