Bush Limits Role as Trouble Festers

By T.R. Reid Washington Post Foreign Service Friday, June 22, 2001; Page A20

LONDON, June 21 -- There's rioting in the streets of Belfast; there's angry name-calling in the Northern Ireland assembly; the province's first minister is threatening to resign. In short, it looks like another tough summer in the embattled British province -- but this year, there's one element missing.

For the past four years, summer tensions in Northern Ireland have prompted a raft of phone calls from the White House as President Bill Clinton appealed personally to Catholic and Protestant leaders for restraint. But the Bush administration plans no such direct involvement.

"The key to this does not lie in Washington," said Richard Haass, the State Department's new director of policy planning, who is serving as President Bush's point man on Northern Ireland. Stopping here today en route to Belfast to meet the various players, Haass said the administration "is prepared to help" and will be "flexible" on the problem. "But I don't think anything like American mediation is in the offing. The emphasis ought to be on the local parties themselves."

Tensions always rise in the early summer as Northern Ireland heads into its controversial "marching season," when Protestant fife-and-drum bands take to the streets for parades celebrating a Protestant victory over Roman Catholics in 1690.

This year, the first signs of trouble erupted in the Ardoyne neighborhood of north Belfast, where sectarian gangs of young people have fought each other and the police for two nights running. Five police officers were hospitalized after a rain of stones and molotov cocktails from neighborhood mobs Wednesday night.

Protestants threw stones at girls leaving a Catholic school Wednesday; a pipe bomb was reportedly thrown at a Catholic-occupied home. Both sides blamed the other for starting the violence.

Trouble resumed today as darkness fell, with reports of gunfire directed at police later in the night. No one was reported hit, but at least a dozen officers were injured.

The larger problem is a looming political crisis that threatens to stall the ambitious peace process created by the Good Friday agreement in 1998. Northern Ireland's first minister, or governor, David Trimble, has threatened to resign on July 1 unless there is clear movement toward disarmament by the Irish Republican Army. The IRA has said it will not be moved by demands from Trimble or any other Protestant leader.

Trimble is the leading supporter of the Good Friday agreement on the Protestant side. Under the deal's complicated rules for power sharing between pro-British Protestants and pro-Irish Catholics, it will be hard to elect anyone other than Trimble as first minister.

Thus his resignation could mean the end of the new local government, a result neither side desires. There is speculation that the British government could suspend the local government and restore direct rule from London to prevent Trimble's resignation.

That fairly drastic step would allow for negotiations to keep the government alive. The anger and confusion -- indeed, Trimble's threat to resign -- are nothing new for Northern Ireland, but it has survived previous crises.

This time, though, the parties apparently will not have the involvement of a U.S. president.

Bush has won praise in Northern Ireland since taking office. Granting a request from the British and Irish governments, he outlawed contributions from Americans to violent paramilitary groups waging guerrilla war against the peace plan. And he dispatched Haass to meet Northern Ireland's leaders and offer encouragement.

Some say a lower level of U.S. involvement could matter. "It makes a difference when you get that call," said Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, the largest Roman Catholic party, in a recent interview. "If the president of the United States asks you, then yes, you want to find a way to cooperate."

© 2001 The Washington Post Company

-- Anonymous, June 22, 2001