Another Cease-Fire In N. Ireland
The Irish National Liberation Army, a small but vicious anti-British gang opposed to Northern Ireland's peace agreement, announced a cease-fire Saturday.
The outlawed group made its announcement hours before the people of Ireland, north and south alike, prepared to observe a minute's silence in memory of the 28 people slain in last weekend's car bombing in Omagh.
Another anti-British gang, dubbed the Real IRA, claimed responsibility for that attack.
The INLA statement is a significant boost to restoring confidence in Northern Ireland's search for peace.
The paramilitary group's last admitted violent act was June 25, when a car bomb destroyed part of the border town of Newtownhamilton, wounding 11 people.
The statement, announced at the west Belfast headquarters of the INLA's political representatives, the Irish Republican Socialist Party, means that only one anti-British group in Northern Ireland, the Continuity IRA, has yet to call a truce.
"We acknowledge and admit faults and grievous errors in our prosecution of the war," the statement said.
"Innocent people were killed and injured and at times our actions as a liberation army fell far short of what they should have been," it added. "For this we as republicans, as socialists and as revolutionaries offer a sincere and heartfelt apology."
The INLA has killed more than 150 people since its foundation in 1975 during the IRA's first lengthy truce.
The development follows the Irish Republican Army cease-fire of July 1997 and the announcement Wednesday by the Real IRA dissidents to observe their own "suspension" of attacks in British-ruled Northern Ireland.
The INLA's goal, like the IRA's, was to abolish Northern Ireland as a Protestant-majority state linked with Britain. Its deadliest attack came in 1982 when it bombed a rural disco frequented by off-duty British troops, killing 11 soldiers and six Protestant women.
But the INLA frequently suffered from infighting. The group's former commander, Gino Gallagher, was assassinated in Belfast last year by comrades arguing about how to split the proceeds from drug dealing and other criminal rackets.
The moment of silence was called for by the leaders of Ireland's four largest Christian denominations Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Anglican and Methodist.
Ministers will lead ecumenical prayers in at least 40 towns across Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, but the main focus will be Omagh itself.
"We want to say with as loud a voice as possible that evil is not going to defeat us and that good will prevail," said a Presbyterian minister in Omagh, the Rev. Robert Herron, who is helping organize the ceremony.
"We must all go out in huge numbers if we can. It will be an important act of solidarity at this difficult time," said Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern.
In a symbol of new life amid so much deat, a 21-year-old Protestant woman who suffered leg wounds in the blast gave birth Friday to a 7-pound, 6-ounce baby girl.
Public revulsion against the Real IRA was demonstrated Friday in the Irish Republic border town of Dundalk.
Bernadette Sands-McKevitt, the political activist most prominently associated with the Real IRA dissidents, was prevented from opening up her picture frame and printing shop in a Dundalk shopping mall.
Mall managers complained they were losing business and didn't want to be associated with her or her partner Michael McKevitt, widely identified as the Real IRA's founder. Two security guards kicked her out after she refused to leave.
Sands-McKevitt, sister of late IRA hunger strike leader Bobby Sands, is a leader of a legal pressure group that opposes the IRA-allied Sinn Fein party's acceptance of an April agreement outlining a new compromise government for Northern Ireland.
She has condemned the killing of civilians in Omagh.
Written by Shawn Pogatchnik