Blair, Ahern make new bid for peace in Northern Ireland

May 2, 2000
Web posted at: 5:27 a.m. EDT (0927 GMT)

In this story: U.S. gun-running case casts shadow across Atlantic Protestant group calls off Dublin parade RELATED STORIES, SITES

From staff and wire reports

LONDON -- Britain's prime minister and his Irish counterpart were meeting Tuesday in a bid to reassemble the fractured Northern Ireland peace process.

A power-sharing government in the British province lasted just 72 days before it fell apart in February -- and Tuesday's talks were made doubly urgent by a deadline for guerrilla disarmament that's just three weeks away.

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Peace in Northern Ireland?

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern were meeting in London for talks with pro-British Unionists, moderate nationalists and Sinn Fein republicans.

But hopes were not high for an immediate breakthrough.

Blair and Ahern have struggled to get all parties to agree on a formula to take guns out of the political arena and build a power-sharing government of Roman Catholics and Protestants.

U.S. Gun-running case casts shadow across Atlantic

A U.S. gun-running case that opened Monday cast a shadow over the talks. Prosecutors in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, said three men and a woman were charged with trying to ship arms for the IRA from the United States.

"Whilst the IRA and Sinn Fein continue to say there will be no decommissioning of illegal armaments, I have no reason to be optimistic about the outcome of these talks," said John Taylor, deputy head of the Protestant Ulster Unionist Party.

"It appears to me that the Dublin government is backsliding on the requirements of the Belfast agreement," he said.

Protestant group calls off Dublin parade

Meanwhile, the pro-British Orange Order movement has canceled a march planned for the streets of the Irish capital on May 28, state broadcaster RTE said Monday.

The parade, to commemorate the Protestant organization's first meeting in Dublin more than 200 years ago, was postponed by organizers who blamed political opposition and intimidation in the overwhelmingly Roman Catholic country.

Several hundred members of the fraternity, which has its power base in largely Protestant Northern Ireland, had planned to hold the march -- their first in Dublin since the late 1930s -- after a special church service.

Three decades of sectarian violence in the province have cost 3,600 lives.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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February 9, 2000

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