DATE=5/30/2000
TYPE=U-S OPINION ROUNDUP
TITLE=NORTHERN IRELAND PROGRESS
NUMBER=6-11845
BYLINE=ANDREW GUTHRIE
DATELINE=WASHINGTON
EDITOR=ASSIGNMENTS
TELEPHONE=619-3335
INTERNET=YES
CONTENT=
INTRO: The predominantly protestant Ulster Unionists
voted this past weekend to rejoin a Northern Ireland
legislative assembly, to share local governance with
their former hated enemies, the predominantly Roman
Catholic Republicans.
With the Irish Republican Army compromising on the
most sensitive question of disarming, the peace
process appears to have, once more, been rescued.
The Unionist vote has prompted a swift congratulatory
response from some major U-S papers, with more
expected. We get a sampling of the early reaction now
from ____________ in today's U-S Opinion roundup.
TEXT: The British government has once again handed
back local authority to a legislative assembly in
Stormount, Northern Ireland, made up of formerly
bitter enemies. The move comes as the Irish
Republican Army appears to be compromising on the very
difficult issue of disarmament. The I-R-A, after what
looked like a long stall, said earlier this month it
would place all its weapons on display for a pair of
impartial, international observers, and out of reach
of its forces.
The latest moves draw a good deal of comment,
including this from Pittsburgh's Post-Gazette.
VOICE: It was a close call, but the leading pro-
British Protestant party in Northern Ireland has
endorsed the reinstatement of a provincial
government in which power will be shared with
"Nationalist" Catholics, including members of
Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army's political
wing. Saturday's 53 percent Yes vote by ... the
Ulster Unionist Party is a major step forward.
It is also a victory for David Trimble, the
bespectacled law professor who has put a new and
reasonable face on Ulster Unionism.
TEXT: In Boston, where this country's largest
population of people of Irish heritage follows events
there with great interest, The Boston Herald comments:
VOICE: It was the moment to seize the future in
Northern Ireland, and David Trimble, leader of
the Ulster Unionist Party, managed to move
enough members at his party's convention ... to
do that. [He] ... had delayed for a week the
meeting of the 860-member ruling council to give
himself time to lobby party members and perhaps
time for world opinion to make its impact on
those who can't accept the notion that it's time
for peace to take hold. Those who have spent
generations fighting and mistrusting each other
are reluctant to let go of the hatreds. /// OPT
/// That's a failing for Protestant and Catholic
hard-liners alike. But the fact remains that
with rare exception the guns are silent and have
been since even before the Good Friday Agreement
was ratified. ... /// END OPT /// [Mr.]
Trimble, a smart and committed politician, knew
that to turn down this offer was to risk
international embarrassment. And so he made it
work. Now the job of governing lies ahead.
After this, that should look easy.
TEXT: That was the view of the Boston Herald. Writing
in The Miami Herald the day before Saturday's vote,
nationally syndicated columnist Cal Thomas is far more
pessimistic. His column is based on a recent
conversation with the next generation of Irish
leaders, Catholic and Protestant, Republican and
Unionist, whom he met at Belfast City Hall recently.
The comments of one young man, Eoin O'Broin, a 28-
year-old Sinn Fein member, seemed to color Mr. Thomas'
overall view that peace will be very, very difficult
to achieve.
VOICE: [Mr.] O'Broin says: "It's a myth ... we don't
understand each other." He says ... the debate
needs to move from a mind-set of one side having
victory over the other to compromise. But the
nationalists and unionists can't agree even on
seemingly simple things. The unionists want to
keep flying the Union Jack on government
buildings. The nationalists say that the Irish
flag ought to be displayed alongside, or there
should be no flags at all. The unionists
consider this unrealistic because no sovereign
nation does such a thing. And so it goes, even
in polite company.
TEXT: Mr. Thomas goes on to quote a young woman
member of the Ulster Unionist Party who says she
is less sure about the prospects for peace than
she was recently, and another woman who is ready
to move away from Ireland if this latest effort
fails.
TEXT: The New York Times, however, is more upbeat,
calling the vote "Another Gain for Irish Peace."
VOICE: The vote was a tribute to the statesmanship of
the Unionists' leader, David Trimble, who has
resumed his post as Northern Ireland's first
minister. Mr. Trimble spent the last week in an
energetic effort to convince his party not to
abandon the peace accords. Gerry Adams, who
leads the I-R-A's political wing, Sinn Fein,
took the personal and political risk of pressing
the I-R-A to make its arms proposal. Mr.
Trimble's last hurdle turned out to have nothing
to do with disarmament. Unionists were furious
that Britain had proposed changing the name of
Northern Ireland's police, the royal Ulster
Constabulary, to the more neutral Northern
Ireland Police Service. The change was one of
dozens of necessary reforms recommended by a
commission headed by Chris Patten, the former
governor of Hong Kong, that sought to make
Northern Ireland's police more inclusive and
accountable. Currently, 93 percent of its
members are protestant. Britain's Northern
Ireland secretary, Peter Mandelson, cooled
Unionist passions by deleting mention of the
name change from the police bill now before ...
Parliament and announcing ... other contentious
symbolic issues would be decided later. ... A
durable peace in Northern Ireland will require
not only the kind of political changes that are
developing but also a change in powerful
institutions like the police.
TEXT: So writes the New York Times. Back in Boston,
The Christian Science Monitor is also cautiously
optimistic.
VOICE: Both sides in Northern Ireland have their work
clearly cut out. The Irish Republican Army and
its political arm, Sinn Fein, must promptly
follow through on pledges to allow international
inspection of arms dumps. And the Unionists,
who favor continued federation with Britain,
must show a capacity to move toward compromise
solutions to such emotional issues as reforming
the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the provincial
police force that ... many Catholics regard as
repressive. ... Those are eminently solvable
problems - - especially if the thinking in
Northern Ireland continues to evolve away from
centuries of distrust toward a new era of
community.
TEXT: On that note, we conclude this sampling of
early reaction in the U-S press to the latest advance
in the Northern Ireland peace effort.
NEB/ANG/gm
30-May-2000 15:01 PM LOC (30-May-2000 1901 UTC)
NNNN
Source: Voice of America
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