Northern Ireland Rioters, Police Clash In Catholic Sector Officials Say Cease-Fire Remains In Place, As Is British Plan To Meet With Sinn Fein

Rioting broke out Saturday morning at a police station in a Roman Catholic part of West Belfast as about 100 people threw gasoline bombs at police, who responded by firing several rounds of plastic bullets.

There were no injuries reported, and a spokesman for the Royal Ulster Constabulary said the reason for the violence was not clear. There was speculation in the area that the rioters were protesting the recent arrest of a neighborhood man on charges that he was engaged in terrorist activity.

But officials said that the violence, which lasted 2-1/2 hours, did not violate the cease-fire called on July 20 by the Irish Republican Army, which has support in the West Belfast area of Ballymurphy where the violence broke out.

That meant that the rioting did not affect the British government’s decision, announced Friday, to invite the IRA’s political wing, Sinn Fein, to take part next month in full-fledged peace talks for the first time since sectarian violence erupted in Northern Ireland in 1969.

The invitation, which was immediately accepted by Sinn Fein, was made by Mo Mowlam, the Northern Ireland secretary, who said he made her decision after determining that the IRA cease-fire was genuine.

Sinn Fein did not comment on the the incident Saturday in Belfast. Its president, Gerry Adams, and two of his principal colleagues, are to visit the United States in the coming week to present their position on the peace talks.

With Adams will be Martin McGuinness, the head of the party’s peace negotiating team, and Caimhghin O Carlain, the first Sinn Fein member to take a seat in the Irish Parliament in Dublin. He was elected from County Monaghan, on the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, in national elections in June.

Adams and his party have been given White House permission not only to visit, but to raise money for Sinn Fein’s political operations. The White House had withdrawn permission for fund raising after the IRA broke a 17-month cease-fire in February 1996.

The Sinn Fein members will stop in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and Washington. In Washington, Adams hopes to meet Commerce Secretary William Daley, and Samuel Berger, President Clinton’s national security adviser.

Adams is expected to ask for administration help in bringing more investment and jobs to Northern Ireland. He is also expected to reassure Irish-American supporters that he has not abandoned the ultimate IRA goal of a united Ireland free of British control.

He has said he will note while in the United States that he intends also to press hard at the peace talks for the staged withdrawal of British troops from Northern Ireland, and for closer ties between the British province and the Irish government in Dublin.