'The Threat Is Real'
Just days before U.S. President Bill Clinton arrives in Northern Ireland, Britain's minister for the province has warned of possible terrorist attacks there and on the British mainland, a newspaper said.
Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson said that in the run-up to Christmas the public must be alert to the threat from the Real IRA, a breakaway Irish republican faction opposed to the British province's ongoing peace process.
"The threat is real. The so-called Real IRA are organized, equipped and quite bold in their desire to disrupt the peace process and to inflict injury and damage both in Northern Ireland and in England," Mandelson told the Independent on Sunday newspaper.
"So people need to be vigilant. All I say to the people planning these attacks is that violence of this kind is not acceptable and won't be tolerated," Mandelson added in the interview, which appeared on newsstands on Saturday evening.
Mr. Clinton, who has been deeply involved in efforts for a lasting peace in Northern Ireland, visits Belfast on Wednesday as part of a three-day trip to Ireland, Northern Ireland and Britain, less than six weeks before he leaves office.
On Mr. Clinton's three-day visit he'll meet with British Prime Minister Blair, Irish Prime Minister or "Taoiseach" Bertie Ahern, Trimble and his deputy First Minister Seamus Mallon.
The American president played a crucial role in coaxing pro-British Protestants and pro-Irish Catholics to sign up to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, a basic framework for peace. Mainstream guerrilla groups are maintaining a cease-fire and Northern Ireland now has a power-sharing government.
But the peace process has stalled lately over efforts to get the Irish Republican Army guerrilla group to enter disarmament talks and the Protestant Ulster Unionists to lift sanctions they have placed on the IRA's political ally, Sinn Fein.
Last week security sources played down a report that the Real IRA — which broke away from the IRA when the latter signed up to the peace process — planned to detonate a bomb in Britain during Mr. Clinton's visit.
The Irish Examiner newspaper said the Real IRA had smuggled a bomb into Britain at least as large as the 500-pound device which killed 29 people in the Northern Ireland town of Omagh in 1998.
The Real IRA was blamed for that attack, the worst atrocity in 30 years of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.
Mandelson told the Independent on Sunday that Mr. Clinton would be missed, no matter who succeeded him in the White House.
"He will be a difficult act to follow, and to match, in his desire to help move the peace process forward," Mandelson said.
"In his involvement with the peace process he has gone way beyond the call of duty, and way beyond the political advantages his involvement might have brought him."
Since the accords, a series of crises has rocked the fledgling Northern Ireand cabinet, including a dispute over disarmament by the Irish Republican Army and tension between the cabinet's top minister, unionist David Trimble, and Gerry Adams, head of the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party.
But the prospects for peace in Northern Ireland certainly appear more sound than in the Middle East, another area where the president has personally applied his skills as a negotiator to try to end strife.
Until disarmament begins, Trimble's unionists have balked at dealing with IRA-linked Sinn Fein party, which is a member of the power-sharing body.
The crisis has come to a head twice this past year. Last winter, the power-sharing cabinet shut down for awhile when the IRA refused calls to disarm.
A pledge by the IRA in May to "put beyond use" its arsenal of arms forestalled trouble for awhile, but last month, Trimble banned Sinn Fein ministers from attending cross-border talks with counterparts from the Republic of Ireland.
For his part Trimble has had to fend off challengers from within his party who want him to take a harder line toward Republicans.
In addition to the wrangling among and within mainstream parties, violent extremists continue to threaten the fragile peace.
This summer, annual marches by Protestant loyalists raised tensions in the province but did not flare into widespread violence. However, a feud between militant unionist guerrillas later resulted in several killings. In addition, splinter republican groups like the Real IRA have been linked to bombings in the past few months.