2 Sides Trade Accusations as N. Ireland Talks Resume

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — The two parties essential to making Northern Ireland’s peace accord succeed accused each other Friday of wasting the past 17 months of negotiations.

American mediator George J. Mitchell brought together Sinn Fein--the political wing of the Irish Republican Army--and Northern Ireland’s major British Protestant party, the Ulster Unionists, in hopes of narrowing their polarized interpretations of the Good Friday accord of 1998.

The landmark agreement, which sought to end 30 years of bloodshed in this British-ruled province, called for the creation of a four-party Cabinet to govern Northern Ireland by November 1998 and the gradual disarmament of the outlawed IRA by May 2000.

But the Ulster Unionists have refused for the past year to accept Sinn Fein as government colleagues unless the IRA first starts to disarm. The outlawed IRA, which called a cease-fire in July 1997, insists that it will not disarm.

Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble, who would lead the Cabinet, emerged from the 70-minute meeting to declare that the latest talks had gone “round in circles” and achieved nothing.

Trimble said his party was prepared to elect the 12-member Cabinet within the week, and offer the specified two posts to Sinn Fein, if Sinn Fein leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness would offer similarly precise promises about the IRA’s gradual disarmament.

But Trimble, who shared last year’s Nobel Peace Prize with Catholic moderate John Hume, said Sinn Fein had offered “disappointing, tellingly evasive responses” to several Ulster Unionist questions.

Adams insisted that he had offered “all sorts of propositions to Mr. Trimble,” but he declined to say what they were. Adams emphasized that nothing in the accord made Sinn Fein’s eligibility for office conditional on IRA disarmament.

Friday’s session was the second Sinn Fein-Ulster Unionist meeting since Sept. 6, when Mitchell launched a formal review of why the peace accord is not succeeding.

Mitchell, the former U.S. Senate leader who led 22 months of negotiations that produced the peace accord, has not announced any deadlines. But local politicians expect him to present formal recommendations by the end of the month.