Unionist

AFTER so many hopes and electoral victories for peace in Northern Ireland, the political breakdown last week renews doubt that the province can reach the tolerance now prevailing in both countries that claim its divided allegiance.Ireland is not anti-British today, nor Britain anti-Irish. The most positive recent development is the strong trust between the Irish government of Bertie Ahern and British government of Tony Blair. As long as they maintain it, they may be able to salvage the Good Friday accord of last year.

LONDON -- The Rev. Ian Paisley's hard-line Protestant unionist party and its bitter rival, Sinn Fein, the Catholic nationalist party headed by Gerry Adams, were the big winners in the Northern Ireland assembly elections, with both parties picking up seats at the expense of more moderate rivals, according to official results announced yesterday. The outcome sets the stage for a groundbreaking power-sharing agreement that will force the two longtime antagonists to either form a government together or forfeit self-rule to London.

DAVID TRIMBLE, the Ulster Unionist who resigned as first minister of the Northern Ireland provincial government because the Irish Republican Army had not begun disarmament, has been handed all he should need to rescind his resignation before Sunday. That's when his absence might require Britain to dissolve the whole structure. On Monday, Gen. John de Chastelain, the Canadian who heads the International Commission on Decommissioning, said, after hearing from the IRA, that "we believe this proposal initiates a process that will put IRA arms completely and verifiably beyond use."

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - British plans for halving the number of its troops in Northern Ireland threaten the safety of Protestants and could delay progress in the province's stalled peace process, Protestant unionist leaders said yesterday. In response to the Irish Republican Army's pledge last week to end its armed struggle, the British army said it would reduce its strength to the lowest point since Northern Ireland's "Troubles" erupted in 1969. Hard-line Democratic Unionists said yesterday that that it could take two years for the peace process to lead to power sharing with Sinn Fein, the IRA's political ally.

THE MOST hopeful portent for resumption of Northern Ireland negotiations is the behavior of the Ulster Unionist Party, led by David Trimble. The party with the largest support in the province, the main voice of the majority Protestants who want to remain in the United Kingdom, will be there.It will not be intimidated by the boycott of the extremist rival for loyalist votes, the Rev. Ian Paisley. The party has made a show of consulting all religious groups. On Monday, Mr. Trimble met with the Roman Catholic primate of all Ireland, Archbishop Sean Brady, which no Unionist predecessor had done.

LONDON - The moderate Protestant leader David Trimble overcame the blocking tactics of hard-line Protestant opponents yesterday and was re-elected first minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly. The election in Belfast of Trimble and of a new deputy first minister - Mark Durkan of the moderate Catholic Social Democratic and Labor Party - held out the promise of a sustained functioning life for the power-sharing government for the first time since it was created by the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement.

LONDON -- Britain put in motion yesterday plans to start the new Northern Ireland government under the freshly revived peace agreement, but immediate progress was halted by a dispute between the rival Ulster Unionist and Sinn Fein parties."

LONDON -- For the first time since the partition of Ireland more than 70 years ago, top officials of the Irish Republic have sat down at a negotiating table with leaders of the predominantly Protestant Unionist parties of Northern Ireland.At issue in the talks, which were also attended by British officials and leaders of other parties from the North, is the political future of the troubled province."I very much hope that everyone will prove up to the magnitude of the occasion and proceed in a sensible and workmanlike way," said Sir Patrick Mayhew, Britain's minister in charge of Northern Ireland.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- For the first time in 17 years, leaders of Ulster's feuding unionist and republican traditions will open talks today on a new political future for the strife-torn province.Over the next 10 weeks, they will try to end the sectarian violence that has left 3,000 dead over the past two decades of "The Troubles."Their difficult quest: to find a formula for the peaceful, local government of Northern Ireland.The province has been controlled by the British Parliament since the provincial legislature at Stormount was abolished in 1972 in the face of unionist (Protestant)

In April 1992, in a crowded hotel room in New York City, Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton addressed an Irish American forum with his opponent for the Democratic presidential primary, former California Gov. Jerry Brown. Clinton made bold commitments on Northern Ireland, including promises to grant a U.S. visa to Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams, to monitor human rights abuses in Northern Ireland and to appoint a peace envoy to the region.Few if any people at the meeting would have predicted that six years later President Clinton would be up in the middle of the night on the telephone to his envoy, former Sen. George Mitchell, urging him on through the final hours of multiparty negotiations that resulted in the historic Good Friday peace agreement.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - Northern Ireland's main Protestant party announced yesterday that it would end the Protestant-Catholic power-sharing government set up by the province's peace agreement unless the Irish Republican Army makes credible moves by January to disband and disarm. David Trimble, the party's leader and the first minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly, emerged from a showdown with his 860-member Ulster Unionist Party governing council to say that he and his party members were "fed up" with the "dilatory and limited response" that Prime Minister Tony Blair and the British government gave their "very real concerns" about the IRA and the participation in government of its political wing, Sinn Fein.

THE GOOD NEWS from Northern Ireland is considerable and also, it is hoped, contagious. Executive government is back with David Trimble as first minister. He was approved by the majority of members of the assembly, by his Ulster Unionist Party and by the loyalist grass roots as polled. The new deputy first minister is Mark Durkan, new leader of the Social Democratic and Labor Party (SDLP), which has been the main political voice of the Catholic minority for three decades. Mr. Durkan represents generational change from Seamus Mallon in government and from John Hume in leading the party that pioneered civil rights and constitutional nationalism.

LONDON - The moderate Protestant leader David Trimble overcame the blocking tactics of hard-line Protestant opponents yesterday and was re-elected first minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly. The election in Belfast of Trimble and of a new deputy first minister - Mark Durkan of the moderate Catholic Social Democratic and Labor Party - held out the promise of a sustained functioning life for the power-sharing government for the first time since it was created by the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - For the first time in Northern Ireland's current stalemate, the Irish Republican Army offered publicly yesterday to put its arsenal of explosives, rifles and mortars "completely and verifiably beyond use." But the 11th-hour gesture failed to break a deadlock that threatens the province's political institutions with at least temporary shutdown by the weekend. The prospect of a suspension of Northern Ireland's 108-seat Assembly inspired increasing acrimony across the province's divide, raising the possibility that the IRA's disarmament offer could be withdrawn if British authorities go ahead with the shutdown.

DAVID TRIMBLE, the Ulster Unionist who resigned as first minister of the Northern Ireland provincial government because the Irish Republican Army had not begun disarmament, has been handed all he should need to rescind his resignation before Sunday. That's when his absence might require Britain to dissolve the whole structure. On Monday, Gen. John de Chastelain, the Canadian who heads the International Commission on Decommissioning, said, after hearing from the IRA, that "we believe this proposal initiates a process that will put IRA arms completely and verifiably beyond use."

ONCE MORE, Northern Ireland has come through the main marching season without major explosion. But the understanding, tolerance and mutual respect needed to make its experiment in power sharing a success are not in sight. The British Parliament celebrated the 310th anniversary of William of Orange's victory over King James at the Battle of the Boyne by renaming the Royal Ulster Constabulary as the Northern Ireland Police Service. But it stopped short of legislating other reforms recommended by a commission to win police respect in both communities.

LONDON -- David Trimble doesn't own a bowler hat.For a Protestant politician in Northern Ireland, this omission is a big deal. The bowler hat is a badge of Protestant identity, part of the uniform that Orangemen wear as they march through streets, celebrating victories in long-ago battles that shaped the landscape. Celebrating their Britishness."People keep telling me to get a hat," he says with a laugh. "But I won't."Mr. Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionists, the most powerful Protestant political party in Northern Ireland, is an independent spirit.

NORTHERN Ireland's new Cabinet is a tribute to former U.S. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell's tact and patience as moderator of the talks that brought it about.Now they are on their own.The new regime resembles an attempt that got off the ground in 1974 only to crash under withering opposition from the distrusting Protestant community.A young Ulster Unionist politician who helped shoot it down, David Trimble, leads this experiment as first minister. Seamus Mallon, of the Social Democratic and Labor party in the Catholic community, is deputy minister.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - Divided yet determined to preserve Northern Ireland's landmark 1998 peace accord, the Ulster Unionists narrowly agreed yesterday to return to a power-sharing local government of Protestants and Roman Catholics. Within hours of the make-or-break ballot that had political careers and peace on the line, Britain announced that home rule would be restored in the province as of midnight tomorrow. David Trimble, leader of the Protestant, pro-British Ulster Unionists, will regain power as first minister in a government that includes his fiercest foes representing Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army.

NORTHERN Ireland's new Cabinet is a tribute to former U.S. Senate Majority Leader George Mitchell's tact and patience as moderator of the talks that brought it about.Now they are on their own.The new regime resembles an attempt that got off the ground in 1974 only to crash under withering opposition from the distrusting Protestant community.A young Ulster Unionist politician who helped shoot it down, David Trimble, leads this experiment as first minister. Seamus Mallon, of the Social Democratic and Labor party in the Catholic community, is deputy minister.