New IRA Cease-Fire Sought as British Meet With Sinn Fein

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — The British government and Irish Republican Army supporters offered cautious hope Wednesday of achieving a new IRA cease-fire after their first meeting in 15 months.

“It was a meeting which addressed many of the difficulties which have stalled the peace process for the last number of years,” Martin McGuinness, chief negotiator of the IRA-allied Sinn Fein party, said after three hours of talks at Stormont Castle, the seat of British administration in the provincial capital.

The four-member Sinn Fein team emphasized its need to gain speedy access to negotiations on Northern Ireland’s future that will resume among nine other parties and the British and Irish governments on June 3.

Four government advisors, led by senior civil servant Quentin Thomas, pressed Sinn Fein for an “unequivocal” IRA cease-fire before that could happen.

Sinn Fein has been barred from the negotiations because the IRA abandoned its 1994 cease-fire in February 1996.

The talks began last year under the direction of former U.S. Sen. George Mitchell (D-Maine) but have made little progress, largely because of Protestant politicians’ fear that Sinn Fein might be admitted without a permanent IRA cease-fire.

Leaders of the province’s pro-British Protestant majority have threatened to walk out of the talks if IRA supporters are allowed in.