New N. Ireland Leader Warns of Threat to Peace

BELFAST, Northern Ireland —  With bombers, gunmen and rioters sowing havoc anew, the leader of this province’s fledgling government warned Thursday that a fragile civil peace could be swamped by sectarian strife if a solution isn’t found in days.

“Time is running out,” First Minister David Trimble said of resolving tensions over a summer political ritual known as “marching season.” He added that “if between now and the weekend, we do not find a satisfactory way out,” the consequences will be dire.

On Sunday, tens of thousands of Protestants will take to the streets in towns and villages across Northern Ireland--a tradition that this year could push growing anger over the edge.

In London, Tony Blair, the British prime minister, met for 90 minutes Thursday at his Downing Street residence with four leaders of the Orange Order, Northern Ireland’s most influential Protestant organization. But Blair refused to accede to their demand that Protestants be allowed to stage their yearly march through a Roman Catholic neighborhood in Portadown.

Last Sunday, Orangemen in black bowler hats and orange sashes were turned back from that city’s Garvaghy Road, and each night since, gangs of Protestants have clashed with police about 25 miles to the northeast in Belfast, the capital, and in other areas of the province.

According to the Royal Ulster Constabulary, at least 50 police officers have been hurt in attacks on security personnel since the standoff in Portadown began.

There have been 14 shootings, 29 bomb attacks, 509 gasoline bombings and 154 carjackings, the constabulary said. It has registered more than 500 attacks on police and army troops, including in Belfast, Newtonabbey and Portadown; in Glarryford, police seized bottles of concentrated nitric acid they said they believed were intended to be used against them.

Early Thursday, security forces fired plastic bullets at a group of Protestants as they tried to penetrate one of the barbed-wire cordons near Drumcree Anglican church that British soldiers have laid down to seal off Catholic areas of Portadown. Late Thursday, some of the protesters broke through the police line, and several police officers were injured.

In the town of Carrickfergus, police also fired plastic bullets to disperse a crowd that had gathered at a house that had been firebombed.

The display of anger over enforcement of a ruling by the province’s independent Parades Commission to bar the Portadown marchers from the Catholic area--part of the route Orangemen have been walking since 1807--has become the most serious unrest to rock Northern Ireland since a peace and power-sharing settlement was signed by eight Catholic and Protestant parties April 10.

Already, 230 homes and other buildings have been attacked, some with gasoline bombs, and 317 motor vehicles damaged, many burned to hulks.

Because of the risk of damage and injury, stores in central Belfast have been closing at 7 p.m., instead of 9, and trains and buses in many cities have suspended night service.

Authorities fear things might really get out of hand this weekend, when large crowds of Protestants will assemble to commemorate the anniversary of the 1690 Battle of the Boyne, when troops of the Protestant King William of Orange vanquished the forces of James II, Britain’s last Catholic sovereign.

More than 550 parades throughout the province are scheduled for Sunday, and the Rev. Ian Paisley, who leads a hard-line Protestant party that opposed the April settlement, said marchers might decide to flock to Portadown to join Orangemen who remain camped out there by the hundreds.

Were that to happen, a major outbreak of violence would seriously endanger progress made toward ending the three decades of sectarian and political strife in Northern Ireland in which 3,600 people have died.

In June, voters elected a new assembly; on July 1, Trimble, a Protestant, and Seamus Mallon, a Catholic, became the first minister and deputy first minister of the new provincial government.

Orange Order leaders have accused the province’s Catholic minority of not respecting the majority’s right of self-expression and culture. “This protest is not party-political,” Robert Saulters, grand master of the Orange Order, proclaimed in Portadown, where he and some Protestant political leaders traveled Thursday to show support for the marchers. “This protest is about stopping further cultural apartheid in Northern Ireland. It is about ensuring civil rights for all and special rights for none.”

Orangeman David McNarry warned that if his 80,000-member group and its sympathizers wished it, they could “paralyze the country in a matter of hours.”

That is not a possibility that Trimble, himself a member of the order, will take lightly: In 1995, Orange Order members barred from marching in the Catholic area of Portadown laid virtual siege to airports, roads and other economic and transportation choke points, slowing Northern Ireland’s economy for three days.

The next year, violence during the march kindled a week’s worth of unrest across the province, and 340 people were injured and one killed.

Some prominent Catholic politicians accuse the Orangemen of exploiting the Portadown standoff in an attempt to undermine the new assembly and cross-community government.

For many Catholics, whose long-term goal is reunification with the mostly Catholic Irish Republic to the south, the marches are an in-your-face reminder from Protestants about who has been the master in Ireland for centuries.

Trimble, who met with Orange Order officials in Belfast, appears to be seeking compromises on both sides.

In 1997, a face-saving formula was found that allowed 1,200 Orangemen to march, in silence, along 400 yards of the Garvaghy Road. The march was peaceful. But before and after, Catholic residents clashed with police, showering them with Molotov cocktails, bottles and bricks. Police fought back with plastic bullets, and, in the end, 28 people, including 12 police officers, had been injured.

“The dialogue is not at an end,” Blair spokesman Alistair Campbell assured reporters after the meeting with the Orangemen in London.

On Thursday, the Belfast Telegraph newspaper estimated the cost of the first five days of unrest at 80 million pounds (about $131 million)--half of that in lost receipts from tourists scared away from Northern Ireland.