Trimble calls for rearms

David Trimble, elected last year to lead Northern Ireland's still-unformed Protestant-Catholic government, made the appeal on the eve of renewed talks in London to be led by the British and Irish prime ministers.

Speaking to BBC television, Trimble said the outlawed Ulster Defense Association and Ulster Volunteer Force should hand over weapons to the disarmament commission established as part of the year-old peace accord.

Like their enemies in the Irish Republican Army, the UDA and UVF have been observing cease-fires but have refused to start disarming as the peace agreement anticipated.

The IRA's position has ensured Protestant refusal to form any government that includes the IRA-allied Sinn Fein party, which gets enough votes to lay claim to two of the 12 prospective Cabinet posts. Neither UDA nor UVF politicians have sufficient support to merit government posts.

But Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, said that if Britain and Ireland persist in demanding a weapons handover, then "the agreement is dead." He spoke during a discussion program on the Irish TV station, RTE.

Trimble, meanwhile, said a UDA-UVF gesture would leave the position of IRA hard-liners "untenable."

If the UDA and UVF "move now, they have the opportunity of securing real peace on a satisfactory basis for everyone," Trimble said.

The UDA and UVF, responsible for killing more than 800 Roman Catholic civilians since Northern Ireland's conflict began in the late 1960s, have a far less sophisticated weapons stockpile than the IRA, responsible for 1,800 killings.

Meanwhile, Northern Ireland's police chief announced a new investigation into one of the most controversial assassinations in the conflict - the 1989 slaying of Catholic lawyer Pat Finucane. The UDA claimed responsibility for the killing.

Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan said the new probe would focus on whether police or soldiers aided Finucane's killers.

04-19-99