N. Ireland Teeters
Britain ordered more troops into Northern Ireland on Friday, beefing up its forces in anticipation of weeks of confrontations between militant Protestants and Catholics.
The deteriorating security situation added to already grave pressures on Northern Ireland's joint Catholic-Protestant administration, the centerpiece of the U.S.-mediated Good Friday peace accord of 1998.
Shortly after the announcement that an extra 1,600 soldiers were coming, rival Protestant and Catholic mobs in north Belfast resumed their stone-throwing attacks on each other and the police struggled to keep them apart.
Since clashes first broke out Tuesday night in the predominantly Catholic enclave of Ardoyne, more than 60 officers have been injured trying to keep rioters from both sides at bay.
Police lines and armored cars came under renewed barrages of bottles, bricks and occasional gasoline bombs Friday night, but there were no immediate reports of injuries.
The army said the reinforcements, which would bring its strength back up to 15,000 in the province, were needed to back up police as they confront the most volatile few weeks in Northern Ireland's calendar — the annual Protestant marches in early July.
The long-unresolved question of Irish Republican Army disarmament dominated negotiations Friday at Hillsborough Castle southwest of Belfast.
The British and Irish governments, seeking to prevent the Northern Ireland administration's collapse, talked separately with three key parties involved: the Ulster Unionists, the province's major Protestant party; the hard-line Catholics from the IRA-linked Sinn Fein; and the Social Democratic and Labor Party, which represents moderate Catholics.
Britain already stripped the coalition of power once last year when the IRA — which keeps most of its weapons stored secretly in the neighboring Republic of Ireland — refused to disarm as the 1998 pact envisaged.
Ulster Unionist chief David Trimble, who leads the administration, reiterated he would resign if the IRA doesn't start to disarm by July 1. His resignation would bring the four-party coalition to a potentially lethal standstill.
While the Irish government and moderate Catholics have criticized Trimble's threats to resign as a gambit, they too toughened their criticism of Sinn Fein and the IRA.
The IRA, for its part, says it has allowed inspectors access to its arms dumps. It insists it will not disarm until Britain carries through on more troop withdrawals and reforms of the mostly Protestant Northern Ireland police force.
Trimble faces a showdown Saturday at the annual general meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council — his party's 860-member ruling body.
He could face a leadership challenge at the closed-door meetin, although most observers believe this is unlikely.
Trimble's party lost ground in local and national elections to both the hard-line Protestant Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein.
Earlier, Northern Ireland's police commander, Ronnie Flanagan, accused outlawed anti-Catholic paramilitary groups of organizing many of the attacks on police and British soldiers in north Belfast, particularly those involving gunfire and homemade grenades.
Flanagan, visiting one of Belfast's few joint Catholic-Protestant schools, denounced both sides' rioters as "scum — people whose mission in life is to fly flags and strut about in balaclavas (masks), thinking they are either Ireland's finest or Ulster's finest. It's pathetic."
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