NORTHERN IRELAND: Peace Talks Overshadowed by Bomb Discovery

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Sarah O'Hara

DUBLIN, Dec 24 1994 (IPS) - Sinn Fein, the political voice of the IRA paramilitary grouping in Northern Ireland, held a second round of talks with the British government this week in a renewed bid to end 25 years of violence that has claimed thousands of lives.

But the talks were overshadowed by the discovery of a bomb on the eve of the meeting, bringing the issue of the arms and explosives still held by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) to the top of the agenda.

The issue will also top the agenda when the new Irish Prime Minister John Bruton meets his British counterpart John Major, in London, in his first meeting as head of the Irish government since he was elected by the Irish parliament last week.

The IRA, the paramilitary group fighting for a united Ireland which called a ceasefire three months ago, denied on Monday that it had planted the bomb, which was discovered by the Northern Ireland police force and defused.

A bomb squad recovered a kilogramme of Semtex and other explosives at a store in Enniskillen, the town which was the scene of one of the worst IRA atrocities of the last 25 years when 13 civilians died after an explosion at a war memorial in 1987.

A local parliamentarian Ken Maginnis, who is a member of the Ulster Unionist Party, the main party representing the Protestant majority which wants Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom, said that the fact that there was Semtex in the bomb indicated that it had been planted by the IRA.

But both Major and Bruton said they were waiting to see a report on the bomb by the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC). Officials in London said that Major was still going on the “working assumption” that the IRA ceasefire was permanent.

Leader of the Sinn Fein delegation to the talks, Martin McGuinness, refused to comment on the bomb discovery as he met with officials of the Northern Ireland Office, the British government administration in the region.

McGuinness said that his party, Sinn Fein, would be pressing for a date for the beginning of all-party talks to reach agreement on the future of Northern Ireland.

When he was leader of the opposition, Bruton was nicknamed “John Unionist” by the previous Irish prime minister, Albert Reynolds, because of his sympathy for the Protestant majority in Northern Ireland.