Northern Ireland Elections Planned for March
LONDON _ In a process that has progressed in agonizing fits and starts, this was a start: Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart Bertie Ahern announced Tuesday that Northern Ireland assembly elections will be held in March.
The election will restore self-rule to Northern Ireland after an almost 4 {-year suspension that followed the discovery of an Irish Republican Army spy ring operating inside the Stormont government complex. The spy charges were dropped in 2005.
If the March 7 elections go as expected, they will produce a truly historic outcome. The 80-year-old Rev. Ian Paisley, the longtime voice of hard-line Protestant unionism, would become first minister of the Northern Ireland Executive, while Martin McGuinness, a former IRA commander and current Sinn Fein chief negotiator, would become his deputy.
And if that happens, it would mean that Paisley, who has made a career of saying no to Northern Ireland peace initiatives, including the 1998 Good Friday agreement, has finally said yes.
But if either of the two bitter rivals balks at the power-sharing arrangement, either before or after the vote, Blair and Ahern made clear that the election would be cancelled.
The announcement was made by the two leaders after a meeting in London on Tuesday evening. It followed a report earlier Tuesday from the Independent Monitoring Commission, a four-member watchdog panel that praised the IRA for maintaining its commitment to forego violence and terrorism.
Blair said there was “a tremendous yearning now for the process to reach its proper completion,” adding that the election could be “the start of a completely different future for the people of Northern Ireland.”
Blair and Ahern decided the election could go forward after Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams on Sunday obtained his party’s overwhelming agreement to support the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
The PSNI is the successor to the Royal Ulster Constabulary, a police force that was almost entirely Protestant and was viewed by Catholics, and especially the IRA, as an enemy.
The new police service was created by the Good Friday agreement, and by law 50 percent of all new recruits must be Catholic. About 20 percent of its 9,200 officers are Catholic, but until Sunday the IRA and its political wing, Sinn Fein, had never fully agreed to support it or accept its legitimacy.
The significance of the Sinn Fein reversal was underscored last week when the Northern Ireland police ombudsman released a report accusing the RUC of colluding with Protestant paramilitaries in the killings of more than a dozen Catholics. Blair and Ahern were hoping that after the Sinn Fein gesture, Paisley could be persuaded to make a public commitment to the power-sharing arrangement, but that has not happened.
Paisley, who heads the Democratic Unionist Party, called Sinn Fein support for local policing “a step forward,” but he was coy about his commitment to power-sharing.
“I, as leader of the largest unionist party, will set the stage for these elections and you will just have to wait and see what it will be,” he told reporters.
According to Ahern, Blair’s talks with Paisley in recent days had “convinced” the British prime minister that Paisley was prepared to give his blessing to the power-sharing executive.
“I accept that,” Ahern said.
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