Paramilitary Hardball In Ireland

An outlawed pro-British group announced Wednesday it will not talk to Belfast's disarmament commission unless its IRA enemies do so first, a position at odds with the latest plans to make Northern Ireland's peace accord work.

The announcement by the Ulster Defense Association, the biggest paramilitary group in Northern Ireland with more than 1,000 members in hard-line Protestant districts, was certain to complicate and confuse efforts to persuade others to compromise.

A plan brokered this month by American mediator George Mitchell requires the province's major Protestant party, the Ulster Unionists, to drop its long-standing demand for Irish Republican Army disarmament in advance of the formation of a new Protestant-Catholic government for Northern Ireland.

The Ulster Unionists' ruling council on Saturday will vote whether to accept the painful policy shift.

As part of selling the move to skeptical Ulster Unionists, Mitchell's plan expects the IRA and the province's two major outlawed pro-British groups, the UDA and the smaller Ulster Volunteer Force, to begin negotiations with the disarmament commission on the same day that the government receives powers.

But Wednesdays statement by the six-member command of the UDA insisted the group would not appoint a representative to meet the commission before the IRA's representative began discussions.

Although the UDA didn't say how long it would wait, any delay would violate the careful sequence of concessions proposed by Mitchell, who expected all three paramilitary groups to take disarmament steps together.

In its statement, the UDA said recent statements by the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party "have cast some doubt upon commitments given by the IRA."

As a result, the UDA command said, it must "defer its decision" to meet the disarmament commission "until after the IRA has met its commitments."

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams downplayed the significance of the announcement, saying he'd never expected the UDA to deal with the disarmament commission.

Sinn Fein, which is holding its own confidential policy-making meeting, is supposed to receive two of 12 posts in a new Cabinet for Northern Ireland, the long-delayed central institution envisaged in the Good Friday accord of 1998. The British government wants the Cabinet to be formed Monday and given powers Dec. 2.

Before calling a joint cease-fire in 1994, the UDA and Ulster Volunteer Force killed 900 people, mostly Catholic civilians.

A UVF representative has been meeting the disarmament commission since last year, but has refused to surrender any weaponry unless the IRA does too.

Both pro-British groups have affiliated political parties, but neither has the kind of support enjoyed by Sinn Fein in the most hard-line Catholic areas.

The UDA's Ulster Democratic Party failed last year to secure a single seat in Northern Ireland's 108-member legislature, which has the responsibility of electing the Cabnet.

This has meant that, while IRA actions generate political consequences for Sinn Fein, no such leverage exists in relation to the UDA and its representatives.