Northern Ireland's political leaders return to the negotiating table this week alongside British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Ireland's Bertie Ahern, with hardline parties vowing to use "no surrender" tactics that could kill the peace effort.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the province's largest party, refuses to talk directly with Sinn Fein, the second-largest party, until the Irish Republican Army (IRA) disarms and declares its armed struggle for a united Ireland over.
The DUP's firebrand leader Ian Paisley, in a clear reference to the IRA, insisted the "rubbish has to be removed" before any progress in talks could be made.
DUP chairman Maurice Morrow stressed in Belfast last week that the party, which opposed the Good Friday peace accords of 1998, could block any deal for months or years in order to "get it right this time".
Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, said it would talk with the DUP but concede no new ground at the high-level talks Thursday to Saturday at Leeds Castle in England.
While party leader Gerry Adams signalled last week that deal-making with the DUP was "inevitable" at some point, local lawmaker Francie Molloy expressed the view from Belfast: "Republicans in general are not in the mood for surrender."
Blair has warned both sides he will not continue to push for peace at all costs, after two years of intermittent failed talks between the belligerents.
"Two years on, the elements are still the same ... There has to be a complete and unequivocal end to violence, there has to be a willingness on that basis to share power," Blair said on Friday.
"There is no point in us continually having these meetings unless that will exists, and we will find out next week whether it really does."
Sinn Fein is calling for the full implementation of the Good Friday agreement, which effectively ended three decades of sectarian violence that killed nearly 3,300 people and injured more than 36,000.
The key plank of the deal, a power-sharing government including an executive and legislative assembly, was suspended in October 2002 over allegations of spying by the IRA, as the province was put back on direct rule from London.
Demands that will be put to Sinn Fein this week include a repeat call for the IRA to disarm under the watch of an international commission and in a way which can be believed by skeptical Unionists.
The IRA has been observing "a complete cessation of military activities" since August 1994, and given up some of its arsenal, but has resisted calls to give up armed struggle.
"We are waiting for the words `The war is over,'" said Ulster Unionist Party assemblyman Norman Hillis.
Sinn Fein's Molloy suggested the IRA would just disappear on its own if a political deal is made, but warned further stalemate could push the main republican paramilitary group to renew its campaign of violence.
Were he an IRA militant, he said, "if I was being denied my rights, I would have no problem in taking up arms again."
All parties at the table are also likely to urge Sinn Fein to sign up to the policing board -- a highly significant move that would signal approval of the reforms to the controversial force.
The 7,000-strong Police Service of Northern Ireland has revamped its name, uniform and recruitment process to redress a long history of anti-Catholic discrimination by the Protestant-dominated force, but republican paramilitaries continue to target Catholics who join the force.
"The only way for (Sinn Fein) to move forward is in the new policing," said Pat Ramsey, an assemblyman from the more moderate nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), while a Northern Ireland political officer called any Sinn Fein approval "an historic move."
Both DUP and Sinn Fein chalk up their election wins last November in part to their tough no-compromise talk, and analysts fear they could upend the Leeds Castle summit with a similar show directed at voters ahead of a possible British general election next year.
In addition to Blair and Ahern, US envoy on Northern Ireland Mitchell Reiss is to attend the three-day summit.
Asian perspectives of the US have shifted from a country once perceived as a force of “moral legitimacy” to something akin to “a landlord seeking rent,” Singaporean Minister for Defence Ng Eng Hen (黃永宏) said on the sidelines of an international security meeting. Ng said in a round-table discussion at the Munich Security Conference in Germany that assumptions undertaken in the years after the end of World War II have fundamentally changed. One example is that from the time of former US president John F. Kennedy’s inaugural address more than 60 years ago, the image of the US was of a country
‘UNUSUAL EVENT’: The Australian defense minister said that the Chinese navy task group was entitled to be where it was, but Australia would be watching it closely The Australian and New Zealand militaries were monitoring three Chinese warships moving unusually far south along Australia’s east coast on an unknown mission, officials said yesterday. The Australian government a week ago said that the warships had traveled through Southeast Asia and the Coral Sea, and were approaching northeast Australia. Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles yesterday said that the Chinese ships — the Hengyang naval frigate, the Zunyi cruiser and the Weishanhu replenishment vessel — were “off the east coast of Australia.” Defense officials did not respond to a request for comment on a Financial Times report that the task group from
BLIND COST CUTTING: A DOGE push to lay off 2,000 energy department workers resulted in hundreds of staff at a nuclear security agency being fired — then ‘unfired’ US President Donald Trump’s administration has halted the firings of hundreds of federal employees who were tasked with working on the nation’s nuclear weapons programs, in an about-face that has left workers confused and experts cautioning that the Department of Government Efficiency’s (DOGE’s) blind cost cutting would put communities at risk. Three US officials who spoke to The Associated Press said up to 350 employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) were abruptly laid off late on Thursday, with some losing access to e-mail before they’d learned they were fired, only to try to enter their offices on Friday morning
STEADFAST DART: The six-week exercise, which involves about 10,000 troops from nine nations, focuses on rapid deployment scenarios and multidomain operations NATO is testing its ability to rapidly deploy across eastern Europe — without direct US assistance — as Washington shifts its approach toward European defense and the war in Ukraine. The six-week Steadfast Dart 2025 exercises across Bulgaria, Romania and Greece are taking place as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine approaches the three-year mark. They involve about 10,000 troops from nine nations and represent the largest NATO operation planned this year. The US absence from the exercises comes as European nations scramble to build greater military self-sufficiency over their concerns about the commitment of US President Donald Trump’s administration to common defense and
RSS