Vote on Northern Ireland power-sharing at stake

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- Britain signaled Monday it may postpone Northern Ireland's legislative elections unless it nails down clearly worded peace commitments from the Irish Republican Army this week.

Senior British and Irish government ministers talked together in Belfast before reopening negotiations with Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party, on a day when campaigning officially began for the planned May 29 ballot.

Britain said the whole point of the vote -- to elect lawmakers to revive a joint Catholic-Protestant administration for this British territory -- would be doomed unless the outlawed IRA strengthened its commitments to peace and disarmament.

In particular, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in London, the IRA must specifically state it would no longer conduct surveillance or steal files on potential targets; cease efforts to import weapons; and promise to disarm fully within a well-defined time frame. Such commitments are needed to restore Protestant willingness to work with Sinn Fein, he said.

"Is there going to be a complete and total end to all that paramilitary activity?" Blair said. "That is what we need to know from the heart of the IRA, because if they are going to carry on with that type of activity, then there is no basis for progress."

Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, opening his campaign in the town of Omagh -- scene of a 1998 dissident IRA bomb that killed 29 people, insisted the IRA's position was clear, if unpublished. He accused Britain of reducing negotiations over a proposed IRA statement "to a game of Scrabble" and insisted the election go ahead.

But other party leaders said the IRA's proposed statement, portions of which have been leaked by Blair and Adams, made no clear commitment to disarm. They said a speech by Adams on Sunday, when he announced that the IRA was planning to get rid of more weapons "at the earliest opportunity," was full of ill-defined conditions.

"The IRA is as clear as mud on when decommissioning will occur and how total it will be," said David Ford, leader of the Alliance Party, which has spent 33 years trying to unite Protestants and Catholics.

The U.S.-brokered Good Friday peace pact of 1998 proposed power-sharing involving Sinn Fein and full IRA disarmament by mid-2000, but did not explicitly tie the two goals together.

The IRA secretly scrapped a few weapons dumps in 2001 and 2002, but retains an estimated 100 tons of arms. A 12-member administration that included two Sinn Fein lawmakers gained office in December 1999, but suffered a series of breakdowns and has been on ice since October, when police uncovered evidence of an IRA spy ring inside government circles.

In Belfast, Britain's governor for the province, Paul Murphy, and Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen met a Sinn Fein delegation led by Martin McGuinness, who had been education minister in the administration. A recent book identifies him as a member of the IRA's ruling Army Council since 1977.

Pressed by reporters, Blair refused to say that the election would proceed May 29.

He stressed the date was "set in law." That position left open the possibility of a fast-tracked amendment in the House of Commons, where Blair enjoys a commanding majority. Britain used a similar maneuver to delay the election from May 1.

Britain fears the vote could produce sectarian triumphs for the most hard-line parties -- Sinn Fein on the Roman Catholic side of the house, and Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party on the other -- and make it impossible to form another administration.