BRITAIN is struggling to
save Northern Ireland's Catholic-Protestant government, which suffered a
potentially mortal blow when Protestant hard-liners blocked the election of a
government leader.
Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary, John
Reid, planned a second day of emergency negotiations with parties that back the
province's 1998 Good Friday peace accord, following yesterday's razor-thin
defeat for Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble.
Last night, delegations debated behind closed doors with Reid about the legality of several plans. Each was designed to overcome the narrow majority of Protestant lawmakers who refuse to let Trimble resume office atop Northern Ireland's troubled four-party government.
The deadline to elect a Cabinet "first minister" - or suffer the collapse or suspension of the joint Catholic-Protestant legislature - is supposed to be today, although Britain's legal advisers were considering ignoring the deadline and attempting another vote on Monday.
Some negotiators argued in favour of bending the voting rules in the legislature, which currently require senior ministers in the government to receive majority backing from both the Irish Catholic and British Protestant voting blocs.
One suggestion was to reduce the threshold to just 40 per cent Protestant support.
Others tried to persuade a few neutral lawmakers in the middle-of-the-road Alliance Party to join the Protestant voting bloc and create a new majority in favour of Trimble.
Alliance's five lawmakers - which currently are registered as "others" and couldn't influence the outcome of the Trimble vote - were resisting pressure to abandon their neutrality.
Trimble - who resigned as government leader in July in protest of the Irish Republican Army's (IRA) refusal to disarm - had hoped to receive sufficient support on the heels of last week's breakthrough decision by the IRA to begin surrendering weapons.
But while Catholic lawmakers offered Trimble their unanimous support yesterday, his own Protestant bloc voted 30-29 against his return to office.
The pivotal votes against Trimble were cast by two Ulster Unionist rebels who insisted they would not vote to sustain a coalition that included the IRA-linked Sinn Fein party.
Both ruled out the prospect of changing their minds.
One rebel, lawyer Peter Weir, said he didn't believe the IRA intended to disarm fully and, even though he risked being expelled from the Ulster Unionist Party, declared, "Conscience must come before self-interest."
Since the administration cannot operate indefinitely without a leader, Protestant hard-liners - led by firebrand Ian Paisley - are calculating that Britain must eventually concede defeat, dissolve the current legislature and call a new election for the 108-seat body.
Paisley says his Democratic Unionist Party can outpoll Trimble's Ulster Unionists and form an obstructionist majority in the legislature.
Recent polls and June election results have demonstrated rising Protestant opposition to the 1998 pact, particularly Sinn Fein's role in government.
In talks that continued by phone overnight, Reid sought to buy more time for a second attempt to re-elect Trimble. This could involve a decision today by Britain to temporarily strip power from the government, whose 10 remaining Cabinet ministers have continued to wield power despite Trimble's July resignation.
But Britain's legal advisers were also considering allowing the deadline to pass with no suspension.
Reid said he would make an announcement either way today after talks conclude.
Already, Britain has twice removed powers from the local government to delay the vote to fill Trimble's top post. Each time Britain has intervened in this manner, the vote was postponed for a maximum six weeks. The most recent six-week extension expires today.
If Britain were to announce another suspension of powers, the new deadline would be December 14.
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