Peace Talks On Shaky Ground In Northern Ireland Imprisoned Protestant Guerrillas Say They Can’t Support Negotiations

Northern Ireland’s shaky peace process suffered another blow Tuesday when imprisoned members of the province’s largest Protestant guerrilla group insisted they no longer can support the negotiations.

The prison killing of the leader of an extremist armed Protestant faction 10 days ago has triggered a crisis in the talks, which are scheduled to resume Monday. Some analysts here are predicting that fewer negotiators will show up, and that those who do will find greater distrust dividing them.

On Tuesday, Protestant politicians traveled to the Maze, the huge prison outside Belfast where prisoners from all sides of Northern Ireland’s sectarian conflict are kept, to talk with members of the Ulster Defense Association and ask them to give the talks another chance.

“It didn’t go very well. We were unable to convince the prisoners to give us their support,” John White, of the Ulster Democratic Party, told reporters outside the prison.

Imprisoned Protestant guerrillas are viewed as heroes by some members of the Protestant community in Northern Ireland, and their support is considered crucial to any peace agreement.

Driving the tension is concern among extremist and some moderate Protestants that they are being marginalized in the talks, which seek to end nearly 30 years of violence between Northern Ireland’s Roman Catholic and Protestant communities.

Protestant militants have staged two attacks in reprisal for the Dec. 28 killing of Billy Wright in the Maze prison. Two Catholics died in those attacks.

Moderate Protestant politicians have hit the British government with a barrage of claims that Catholics are getting all the concessions in the negotiations, which are being chaired by former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, D-Maine.

While the talks can resume Monday even if one of the smaller Protestant groups, the Progressive Unionist Party, boycotts in deference to the prisoners’ feelings, a reduction in the number of voices at the table would make it less likely that any peace settlement would stick.

One continuing fear: What if the next reprisal attack becomes a massacre, claiming 10 lives rather than one? That could bring an end to the cease-fire that most of the major paramilitary groups have declared.

“There have been dark days in the political process,” said David Kerr, a negotiator for the Ulster Unionist Party, the largest Protestant party, which plans to attend the talks on Monday. “This is coming very close to the darkest, unfortunately. But the situation is not irretrievable.”

Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the outlawed Irish Republican Army, said Protestants are trying to assert a “unionist veto.”

He also said the British government’s top Northern Ireland official, Mo Mowlam, should take firm action to get the negotiations back on track. “She has to take the talks … by the scruff of the neck,” he said after meeting with Mowlam in Belfast on Tuesday.