UUP policy encourages attacks - Adams

Ulster Unionist threats to wreck Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government are encouraging loyalist paramilitaries to launch a new sectarian murder campaign, Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams claimed today.

Mr Adams also urged the British government not to suspend the devolved political institutions in Belfast if David Trimble’s party quits the Stormont cabinet in the New Year.

With republicans being set a January 18, 2003 deadline for the IRA to disband, Mr Adams claimed loyalist terror organisations were being sent a signal they could derail the peace process.

He said: “Those soberly suited people in the UUP are encouraging sectarian killings.”

His claim was denounced by hardline Ulster Unionist Lagan Valley MP Jeffrey Donaldson as disgraceful.

The UUP has already vowed to boycott all cross-border ministerial meetings involving Sinn Fein.

But it is the threat to pull down the political institutions and plunge Northern Ireland’s peace process into turmoil which has sent alarm bells ringing in London and Dublin.

The two governments are set to hold emergency talks in Dublin tomorrow, while Mr Adams is due to meet Taoiseach Bertie Ahern on Thursday.

The Sinn Fein chief has also requested a meeting with Mr Trimble – Northern Ireland’s First Minister – to discuss the move ratified by his party council on Saturday.

Unionist confidence has been drained by allegations the IRA were training left-wing terrorists in Colombia and carried out a raid on Special Branch officers at a top-security Belfast police station.

The provisionals have also been accused of orchestrating street violence along some of the city’s sectarian flashpoints.

If Mr Trimble is not satisfied Sinn Fein is totally committed to democratic means by January 18 then the power-sharing administration would almost certainly be left with just nationalists and republicans.

Such a scenario would place the British government under intense pressure to bring the Stormont regime to a halt.

But after Mr Adams met SDLP leader Mark Durkan at Parliament Buildings, Stormont today to discuss the crisis, he insisted the two administrations must press on with implementing the Good Friday Agreement regardless of unionist plans.

He said: “Tony Blair should not be following the Unionist agenda and should not be even contemplating suspension of the institutions.”

The West Belfast MP insisted that it was now up to the governments and other pro-Agreement parties to minimise the damage caused by a Unionist walk-out.

“Unionism will at some point in the future be up to the task of managing (the peace process) but we can’t wait for them,” he said.

He warned unionists their actions could send a signal to loyalist terrorists that the peace process could be thwarted.

“This gives them the notion that they can win,” he claimed.

“That if they can create instability, if they can create a lack of confidence, if they can kill enough Catholics, if they can throw enough blast bombs then they can bring all of this down.”

But Mr Donaldson, who pressurised his party leader into taking tough sanctions against Sinn Fein, pointed out the UUP Council resolution called for disbandment of all paramilitary organisations including loyalist groups.

“He is trying to cover his own failings and his own inability to deliver peace by pointing the finger at others but no-one will be fooled by his empty rhetoric.

“Time is up for Gerry Adams and it’s time for him to deliver.”

Mr Durkan, the Deputy First Minister, accused Ulster Unionists of giving the paramilitaries the “whip hand” over the future of the power-sharing institutions.

After meeting Sinn Fein and other pro-Agreement parties, he warned the Ulster Unionists there would be no renegotiation of the four-year-old treaty.

The SDLP leader said: “I don’t see how if we were to pursue the path people went on on Saturday that would bring about an end to paramilitarism.

“It would bring about an end to the democratic process that we have here and to the other aspects of the Agreement.”