World

Loyalist Feud Threatens Irish Peace

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

August 19, 2000 / 11:12 PM EDT / CBS

A man was shot and more than 20 homes were attacked overnight in Northern Ireland, as tensions mounted Wednesday, following more than a week of violence linked to differences between Protestant guerrillas.

The attacks on the homes in Carrickfergus, County Antrim, are "related to the ongoing loyalist feud," a security source told Reuters. There were no reports of anyone being injured in the incidents.

In another incident a Protestant man was injured in what has been described as a sectarian shotgun attack and a house was set on fire in Larne, a town northwest of the capital.

A spokesman for the Ulster Unionist Party, the main Protestant political party in a British province divided between a Protestant majority and Roman Catholic minority, said Northern Ireland's peace process could be at risk if violence continued.

"The peace process is not at threat now but if the violence continues then there is always the threat of dragging more people into the feud and that obviously is a threat to the peace process," the UUP spokesman told Reuters.

Politicians believe that Northern Ireland's fledgling hone-rule government will not be at risk unless Catholic republican groups are drawn into the violence, which has in the past few days been confined to Protestant groups.

The attacks have been blamed on the Ulster Volunteer Force. The UVF's feud with the rival Ulster Defense Association already has forced dozens of families from their homes, mostly in the Shankill area of Belfast.

The two outlawed groups operate side-by-side in the same impoverished Protestant communities, fighting over the lucrative rackets they both operate rather than out of any political ideology.

Well-placed sources say Belfast's drug trade is the main prize at the heart of the battles.

"Far too many lives have been lost in this vendetta, but it seems to be spreading and looking to end in more deaths," said William Ross, a Protestant lawmaker from the Ulster Unionist Party, who represents Coleraine.

John White of the Ulster Democratic Party, the UDA's political wing, said he feared the feud could spread out of control all over Northern Ireland.

"A young girl has almost lost her life," White said. "The main groups should call a cease-fire or a cessation of hostilities, even for a short time, to allow talks at various levels to take place."

Seamus Mallon, deputy leader of the moderate Catholic SDLP party and Northern Ireland's deputy first minister, was adamant that "tin-pot little Hitlers" would not derail the peace.

"The agreement will stand. I believe that the peace process, in its broadest sense, will stand as well and it will get stronger as it grows," Mallon said in the Irish News.

Britain rushed troops on to the streets of Belfast and the northern town of Coleraine after shootings there, and have managed to contain the violence but there have been incidents in less heavily policed areas

Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary, Peter Mandelson, and mainstream politicians in the British province demanded on Tuesday that Protestant guerrilla groups end the fighting.

Politicians have said the guerrillas, who call themselves "loyalists" because of their support for British rule and opposition to integration with the Irish Republic, are fighting for control of the lucrative drugs trade.