N. Ireland Leaders Return to Power-Sharing Path

BELFAST, Northern Ireland —  As Northern Ireland’s resurrected Catholic-Protestant government got back to business Tuesday, both sides expressed hope that the unlikely coalition will survive on the second try.

But nobody involved predicted smooth sailing for self-government by the four-party Cabinet--the central goal of the province’s 1998 peace accord, and one that has been repeatedly hamstrung by arguments over Irish Republican Army disarmament.

Sitting beside his IRA-linked party’s two Cabinet ministers, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said they were prepared to wage “a battle a day” with Protestant colleagues and the British government to make the system work.

“The difficulties haven’t gone away,” Adams said at Stormont Parliament building, the government headquarters.

After killing about 1,800 people during a 27-year campaign to abolish Northern Ireland as a Protestant-majority British state, the outlawed IRA has been sticking to a cease-fire since 1997. Hopes for long-term peace here rose in December when Roman Catholic and Protestant politicians formed their long-delayed coalition and Britain, which had directly ruled the province since 1972, placed substantial responsibilities back in local hands.

But the major Protestant party, the Ulster Unionists, agreed to work alongside Sinn Fein only if the IRA responded by gradually scrapping its hidden stockpiles of weapons. Britain suspended the power-sharing experiment after just 10 weeks when the IRA refused to move on disarmament.

Then, this month, the IRA said it would begin putting its weapons “beyond use”--a euphemism for disarmament--if power-sharing was resumed and seen to work. As a result, Britain restored powers Tuesday.

Sinn Fein and the IRA “know themselves how much rides on this,” said Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble, the senior Cabinet minister, who last weekend received only a bare majority of support from his party’s grass-roots council to reenter government with Sinn Fein.

The IRA must begin disarming “in good time and in a good spirit,” Trimble said. Otherwise, he said, “the whole premise of this government will be proved unsustainable once again.”

The first meeting of the reconstituted Cabinet is scheduled for Thursday.