Irish, British Leaders To Meet

The British and Irish prime ministers, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, will meet Wednesday for talks on fragile Northern Ireland peace efforts, officials said Tuesday.

The meeting comes at a critical stage in peace talks that have yielded no public sign of a breakthrough between Northern Ireland's feuding parties.

Former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, chairman of the talks that began in 1996, has set an April 9 deadline for the British and Irish governments and eight participating parties to agree on a new system of government for Northern Ireland.

A Blair spokesman said that the British prime minister and Mitchell both expressed their determination to meet the April 9 date in a telephone conversation Tuesday.

"They both believe it is possible. Clearly there are difficulties but they both believe that in the process of negotiation these can be overcome," he said.

Blair also had telephone talks with Gerry Adams, head of the IRA's Sinn Fein political wing, who told journalists he had urged "substantial and deep-rooted changes" in the British political and constitutional framework to make a settlement possible.

A Sinn Fein party spokesman said Adams had "warned against the UUP strategy of seeking a partial agreement which excludes Sinn Fein" in a reference to the chief pro-British party, the Ulster Unionists.

Negotiators are expected to work from morning to night until Friday and resume April 6, taking breaks only to eat and sleep.

"We simply do not have the luxury of more time," Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said Monday. "Time is very much the enemy in a situation where the opponents of peace are actively seeking to make agreement impossible through the stepping up of violence."

The negotiations in Belfast are supposed to be reinforced by cease-fires by Northern Ireland's major paramilitary groups.

The Irish Republican Army, supported by militant Roman Catholics, declared a cease-fire in July 1997; the Ulster Defense Association and Ulster Volunteer Force, rooted in pro-British Protestant areas, called a truce in October 1994.

But members of both camps have violated their truces sporadically. And dissidents openly opposed to the talks are challenging the established groups' authority with sectarian killings.

The latest victim, a retired Protestant policeman shot outside a supermarket, was buried Sunday. A small anti-British group called the Irish National Liberation Army, which criticizes the IRA-allied Sinn Fein party's participation in talks, claimed responsibility.

The conflict over how Northern Ireland should be governed began in 1968 with street clashes between Catholic protesters and Protestant police. The IRA started bombing and shooting in 1970, fueling the growth of Ulster Defense Association and Ulster Volunteer Force gangs that killed Catholics at random.

The outline of a likely political settlemen has been on the table since the British and Irish governments published joint recommendations in January, but the question is who will agree to it.

The governments want Protestants and Catholics to govern Northern Ireland in coalition, and simultaneously send representatives to a new cross-border council with lawmakers from the Irish Republic.

©1998, CBS Worldwide Inc., All Rights Reserved. Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report