Sinn Fein Leader’s Kin Killed As Peace Talks Set To Resume Protestant Group Guns Down Man With Ties To Major Players

On the eve of resumption of formal peace talks aimed at ending the long history of political violence in this British province, Northern Ireland was shocked Sunday by a particularly bizarre sectarian killing.

A Roman Catholic doorman, Terry Enwright, 28, was shot dead outside a Belfast night club. He was a nephew-by-marriage of Gerry Adams, the president of Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army’s political wing.

The killing occurred shortly after midnight outside a club owned by relatives of David Ervine, leader of the Progressive Unionist Party, which represents Protestant paramilitaries at the formal peace talks.

Ervine and Sinn Fein officials said the killers were members of the Loyalist Volunteer Force, and the guerrilla group later asserted responsibility for the killing. The group splintered away from the Ulster Volunteer Force, the paramilitary group represented at the talks by Ervine.

Tension was already high over a series of recent killings on both sides. But because of the victim’s ties to major figures on both sides, the attack raised fears even higher that one of the Catholic splinter paramilitary groups - which have never bound themselves to the cease-fire being observed by larger guerrilla groups - would retaliate by killing Protestants. This could throw the peace effort into new turmoil.

Adams told reporters Sunday afternoon: “I know it’s important to you to reflect the fact that this young man was married to a niece of mine, but that should not be used as any excuse for killing him. He was heavily involved in community work. He was a good - a brilliant - Gaelic football player.”

The new killing and the confusion caused over the weekend by reports that the British would make new proposals for a political settlement were not expected to keep the formal talks from resuming here today. But they clearly dissipated the atmosphere for the compromise sought by the British and Irish governments, the sponsors of the talks, which had set next May as a deadline for a final agreement.

“It would seem that the LVF were intent on killing the Catholic doormen,” Ervine said. “I look at this situation with awful foreboding. We are awfully devastated.”

But he indicated that his party would take part in the talks scheduled to resume Monday in Stormont, on the edge of Belfast, under the chairmanship of former Sen. George Mitchell.

The Protestant Loyalist Volunteer Force said in a statement that it had killed Enwright in retaliation for the killing in prison two weeks ago of its leader, Billy Wright, by Catholic paramilitaries of a splinter Republican group, the Irish National Liberation Army.