Sinn Fein raids put peace on knife edge

By ANNE McHARDY Herald correspondent

BELFAST - The peace process in Northern Ireland was in imminent danger of collapse yesterday as talks were being organised to limit the damage caused by a police raid on Sinn Fein offices.

The police took away a computer disk from the Sinn Fein offices inside the Stormont Parliament buildings in Belfast. A number of homes of Sinn Fein members, some very senior, were also raided in west Belfast.

A police statement saying that the raid resulted from suspicions that the IRA had managed to infiltrate and gather information from the Stormont office of the Northern Ireland Secretary, Dr John Reid, prompted Ulster Unionist leader and Northern Ireland First Minister, David Trimble to call for Reid to act against Sinn Fein. What was on the seized disk has yet to be made public.

The raid, which had Sinn Fein leaders shouting with frustrated rage inside Stormont, raised immediate questions of how such a politically sensitive search warrant had been issued. The Northern Ireland Office denied that Reid had signed it, saying that the newly reorganised Police Service of Northern Ireland had acted, properly, independently.

Leading party member, Gerry Kelly, with an irony apparent to those who recall the days before the 1996 IRA ceasefire, when Stormont was regarded as an alien Protestant Parliament, was furious that the police had been allowed into the Stormont buildings to raid the office.

Throughout the day, it was being made clear that the raid could not have taken place, given the inevitable damage it would do to the peace process, without the knowledge of Reid. It was equally clear that a long term effect would be to make it more difficult for the PSNI to be accepted as a non-sectarian force, unlike the Royal Ulster Constabulary, which it replaced and which was regarded as a Protestant force.

The police statement prompted Jeffrey Donaldson, a right wing member of Trimble's party who regards himself as favourite to become leader if Trimble is ousted, to demand that Reid should instantly remove Sinn Fein from participation in the power sharing executive set up under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement. Donaldson, like most leading Unionists, was acting in the belief that the raid had found proof that Sinn Fein was guilty of supporting breaches of the peace process by the IRA, something the party angrily denies.

Sinn Fein leaders protested that the raid was harassment and that both the party and the IRA remained committed to the peace process.

Throughout yesterday Sinn Fein supporters demonstrated in various parts of Northern Ireland, using peaceful protest, so party leaders said, not just to show their feelings but also to show that they could use peaceful methods to protest, not just return to the use of violence.

Earlier there were rumours that Trimble, who last month set a January deadline for Sinn Fein to more fully establish its peace credentials or see the Unionists withdrawing from the power sharing executive, was about the resign his party leadership.

He has fought off leadership challenges from Donaldson, from another Unionists MP, David Burnside and from the former Grand Master of the Orange Order, Martin Smyth since he became First Minister three years ago.

If the raids do establish that Sinn Fein's parliamentary offices were being used for IRA information gathering, Trimble will not be able to continue to share power with the IRA.

However, Trimble has, as do many grassroots Unionists, a huge investment in the peace process and a desire to see it succeed, rather than revert to the bad old days of constant bombings.

He will take part in the talks that Reid had already been planning to hold over the next two weeks to try to salvage his executive and the devolved government that is steadily bringing stability and prosperity to Northern Ireland. Also participating will be the Nationalist party, the Social Democratic and Labour Party and Sinn Fein.