Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 22, 1994 TAG: 9410250017
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND LENGTH: Short
Prime Minister John Major announced that the IRA's 7-week-old cease-fire has proved sufficient for British officials to start preliminary talks with Sinn Fein.
``I am now prepared to make a working assumption that the cease-fire is intended to be permanent,'' Major said.
The Irish Republican Army never gave the assurances Britain had demanded that its cease-fire was permanent. But Major said IRA members' adherence to the cease-fire was ``more compelling than their words.''
He said Britain also will talk to the pro-British Protestant paramilitaries - the Ulster Defense Association and Ulster Volunteer Force - if their week-old truce holds.
Reaction to Major's decision was mostly positive, or at least realistic.
``It sticks in my throat having to sit down with the IRA,'' said Gary McMichael, an Ulster Democratic Party leader whose father was killed by the IRA in 1987. ``The IRA have tried to kill me on occasion, right up to the very hours before they announced their cease-fire ... but I know I'm going to have to do it. Because if I don't, we're never going to have peace.''
Between them, the IRA and the Protestant paramilitaries have killed most of the nearly 3,200 people slain in Northern Ireland since the IRA began its campaign against British rule 25 years ago.
by CNB