Tuesday October 23, 2001

LONDON - Sparking expectations of a breakthrough, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams urged the Irish Republican Army on yesterday to begin disarming to save Northern Ireland's peace process.

Adams' call came within days of the likely collapse of Northern Ireland's power-sharing government, created as part of the Good Friday peace agreement of 1998 but hobbled repeatedly by the disarmament issue.

As in 1997, when the IRA announced a cease-fire a day after Adams publicly

recommended it, his speech raised expectations of a quick IRA gesture. British

and Irish officials welcomed the words, but skeptical Protestants demanded action.

Leaders of the Ulster Unionist Party, whose support is essential to the survival of Northern Ireland's government, resigned their posts last week hoping to force an IRA move. They have said they would return to the government if the IRA began to disarm.

Using the same formula as in 1997, Adams said he and his deputy, Martin McGuinness, the reputed former IRA commander, were urging the IRA to take the initiative.

"Martin McGuinness and I have also held discussions with the IRA, and we have put to the IRA leadership the view that if it could make a groundbreaking move on the arms issue that this could save the peace process from collapse and transform the situation," Adams said.

McGuinness, speaking in New York City, said no deadline had been suggested to the IRA. However, he said the Good Friday agreement could collapse "if we don't see a breakthrough in the peace process ... by the end of the week."

A senior Ulster Unionist member reacted cautiously to Adams' speech.

"We have been at pains to state that words are not enough - we want to see action," said Michael McGimpsey, an Ulster Unionist minister who resigned from the government.

"However, it would be begrudging of me not to state that there are promising parts in this statement that may be heralding further steps," McGimpsey said.

The senior British official in Northern Ireland, John Reid, hailed "a highly significant statement."

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern called the speech "a positive and constructive" step, but he cautioned that "we have to wait to see what the response is."

The Rev. Ian Paisley, leader of the hard-line Democratic Unionist Party, dismissed Adams' speech.

"There is nothing in it. There is no talk about the end of the battle, the war is over; no talk of the army giving up its purposes," said Paisley.

Sinn Fein and the IRA have previously linked progress on disarmament to their insistence on radical reform of the police and a sharp reduction in the British military presence in Northern Ireland.

Adams appeared to drop the linkage but said, "a positive IRA move must be responded to with generosity and vision."

He did not recommend a specific step. There has been speculation for some time that the IRA might pour concrete over arms dumps, which it has already shown to a team of international inspectors.

The Ulster Unionists have twice agreed to join administrations including the militant Catholics of Sinn Fein, on condition that IRA disarmament be followed. The IRA has yet to fulfill a May 2000 pledge to put its weapons "beyond use," a euphemism for disarmament.

The IRA is known to have received four boatloads of arms from Libya in the 1980s, including Semtex plastic explosives, and it has bought weapons in the United States. The IRA has also shown great ingenuity in manufacturing explosives from fertilizer and mortars from scrap.

Disarming is an emotional issue for IRA supporters, and Sinn Fein has been cautious about any move which might lead to further splits in the movement - and more recruits to splinter outfits such as the so-called Real IRA, which committed the worst single atrocity in Northern Ireland's 30-year conflict by killing 29 people in Omagh on Aug. 15, 1998.

Adams appealed to IRA supporters to stick together.

"It's not easy to do what we're all trying to do," he said. "Let's get on with it, folks. Let's develop into this, move it forward, keep building our political strength, consolidating the peace process and moving toward our ultimate goals."

Sinn Fein's ultimate goal remains an end to British rule in Northern Ireland and a union of the two parts of Ireland.