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Blair meeting rival Northern Ireland leaders to discuss peace
(AP)
Updated: 2005-08-04 15:39
British Prime Minister Tony Blair scheduled separate meetings Thursday with
Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley, the leaders of Northern Ireland's two major rival
parties, in hopes of building on the Irish Republican Army's week-old peace
declaration, AP reported.
Blair was meeting first with Paisley, whose Democratic Unionist Party
represents most of the province' British Protestant majority - and has
denounced Britain's decision to launch a wave of military cutbacks in immediate
response to the IRA peace. Adams then was to lead a delegation from his
IRA-linked Sinn Fein party to Blair's Downing Street office.
Leader of Northern Ireland's Democratic
Unionist Party, Ian Paisley, arrives for talks with Britain's Prime
Minister Tony Blair at 10 Downing Street in London, August 4, 2005.
[Reuters] | Last Thursday, the IRA declared it had
made its 1997 cease-fire permanent and promised to resume disarming soon.
Britain on Monday published a plan for slashing its 11,000-strong garrison in
Northern Ireland to 5,000 within the next two years - and drew particular
Protestant anger by announcing that three locally recruited, overwhelmingly
Protestant army battalions would be disbanded.
Blair is hoping eventually to persuade Paisley's party to form a
power-sharing administration in Northern Ireland alongside Sinn Fein, but
Paisley says his party is unlikely even to talk directly to Sinn Fein, much less
share a Cabinet table.
A cross-community administration was the central goal of Northern Ireland's
1998 peace accord, but a moderate-led coalition fell apart in 2002 after
suffering repeated breakdowns over IRA activities. Since then, voters have
switched majority support to the Democratic Unionists and Sinn Fein, giving
those two parties veto power over any revival of
power-sharing.
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