Northern Ireland Protestant leader David Trimble said Saturday that the IRA must state whether, when and how it will give up arms before Protestants will consider going back into a power-sharing government with Roman Catholics.
And Gerry Adams, president of the Irish Republican Army’s political wing Sinn Fein, said Britain’s action Friday in suspending the government was a violation of the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement. He called the decision “a disaster” and said Sinn Fein would decide in a week whether to go on with negotiations.
The two leaders’ comments suggested the suspension is likely to be a protracted one.
British officials have said they want leaders on both sides to have a cooling-off period of at least a week before renewing attempts to resolve the crisis.
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British Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson suspended the 10-week-old power-sharing institutions Friday evening because, he said, the IRA had not made a commitment to disarm.
Also Friday, the independent commission on disarmament, headed by Canadian Gen. John de Chastelain, issued a report saying the IRA had made a last-minute statement to the commission that raised “the real prospect” of an agreement on the issue.
The British and Irish governments agreed this was “a development of real significance.”
Mandelson also welcomed the IRA shift but said the statement was “ambiguous” and would not have affected his decision to suspend the government even if he had seen it before he acted.
Trimble, after a meeting Saturday in Belfast of his Ulster Unionist Party’s 860-member ruling council, adopted the same line.
Speaking of the IRA and disarmament, he said, “We need to know whether they are going to do it, how they are going to do it, when they are going to do it.”
Trimble, who was first minister in the government before suspension, had threatened to resign Saturday unless the IRA gave a commitment to disarm. Mandelson said he chose to suspend the government to forestall Trimble’s resignation.
According to the de Chastelain commission, the IRA on Friday indicated “the context in which the IRA will initiate a comprehensive process to put arms beyond use, in a manner as to ensure maximum public confidence.”
The statement said the IRA had defined the context as “the full implementation of the Good Friday agreement and . . . the removal of the causes of conflict.”
The commission suggested that could enable it to “fulfill the substance of its mandate,” which is to achieve full disarmament by Catholic and Protestant paramilitary groups by May 22.
But Mandelson and Trimble said the IRA statement fell short of an unequivocal commitment to disarm. “No clear proposals have been made to me or anyone else,” Trimble said.
Adams, at a Belfast news conference, said Mandelson’s decision to suspend the government “has shaken confidence among nationalists and republicans” in the approach of the British government “and also has confirmed the very dangerous perception among Unionists that they have a veto.”
He accused Mandelson of willfully ignoring a major IRA concession just before the suspension. He and Sinn Fein Vice President Pat Doherty said Mandelson was not telling the truth when he claimed not to have seen the de Chastelain commission report before he announced suspension.
Doherty said he had a copy of a fax timed at 5:48 p.m. local time Friday that was sent to Mandelson by the commission. Mandelson announced the suspension shortly before 6 p.m. and later said he received the commission report only after 6:30 p.m.
The Irish government said it obtained a copy after 7 p.m.
The report was made public at 9:30 p.m.
Adams said he had conveyed the IRA concession to British Prime Minister Tony Blair at noon Friday. “Mr. Mandelson is clearly in default of the Good Friday agreement,” Adams said. “Mr. Trimble is in default also.”
Before the Ulster Unionist meeting Saturday, a spokesman said the party would talk to Sinn Fein to seek clarification of the IRA position. “The time for ambiguous language is past,” he said.
Other Unionist sources said they would need to know what the IRA means by suggesting disarmament could occur together with “the removal of the causes of conflict.”
They suggested the IRA might outline hundreds of causes of conflict, and want to argue about each one of them.
Irish officials in Dublin said they understood the phrase to refer to the removal of British military installations in Northern Ireland and a reduction of British 15,000 troops in the province.
The IRA’s linkage of disarmament and full implementation of the Good Friday agreement appeared to pose a stumbling block for future negotiations.
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Full implementation means restoring the power-sharing government. Mandelson has ruled that out until the IRA commits itself to disarm, and it is unclear whether the IRA will move on disarmament before the suspension is lifted.