N.Ireland's power-sharing attempt fails

NORTHERN IRELAND: The first attempt in years to revive a Catholic-Protestant administration for Northern Ireland failed when Protestant leader Ian Paisley rejected a nomination from his Sinn Fein enemies.

Other parties dismissed the nomination as a Sinn Fein gesture designed to seize the moral high ground. But Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams vowed to keep challenging Paisley to say yes - and said the Democratic Unionist firebrand would bear the blame if Britain gives up on the quest for a joint administration.

Paisley, whose party holds the key to power-sharing, said Monday he would not lead an administration alongside Sinn Fein until the Irish Republican Army-linked party accepts Northern Ireland's police force and encourages Catholic support for it, something Sinn Fein has refused for decades to do.

Paisley also described Sinn Fein leaders as serial killers and bank robbers who must "bow the knee and do what is right." That meant IRA disbandment, he said.

"You're either for or against," said Paisley, an 80-year-old evangelist who leads the Democratic Unionists, the most popular party in Northern Ireland because of its uncompromising attitude to Sinn Fein. "I'm for democracy; they're against it. I'm against terrorism; they're for it."

Britain last week revived the Northern Ireland Assembly for the first time in 3 1/2 years in hopes that both sides of the house eventually will vote in favor of forming an administration led jointly by the Democratic Unionists and Sinn Fein, which represents most Catholics.

That unlikely prospect became possible after disarmament officials last year announced they had gotten rid of the IRA's entire weapons stockpile, the issue that fatally undermined Northern Ireland's previous power-sharing administration.

But nobody from any party expected success Monday, which was the eighth anniversary of Northern Ireland's referendum on the 1998 accord. Voters at the time gave the complex pact, with its central dream of power-sharing, a 71 percent "yes" vote - when virtually all Catholics, but barely half of Protestants, supported the plan.

Expecting a grueling summer of negotiations on power-sharing, Britain has set Nov. 24 as a cast-iron deadline. By then, the assembly must fulfill its core function - to elect an administration - or be dissolved for good.

The U.S. envoy to Northern Ireland, Mitchell Reiss, said he hoped to see progress soon, but stressed he did not want to put pressure on any party.

"We need to start getting on with business, talking to each other, trying to work out some of the problems today, not leaving them until the last minute," Reiss said after meeting in Dublin with Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern.

Sinn Fein, which before the peace process began was isolated and demonized as the IRA's political wing, has grown into the biggest Catholic-backed party in Northern Ireland - partly because of the popularity of the IRA cease-fire, partly because of Adams' political cunning and charisma.

The party wants a slice of power in Northern Ireland in hopes of steering the province out of the United Kingdom and into the Republic of Ireland, which won independence in 1922, a year after the island's partition.

Belfast, Tuesday, AP