Author: Reuters
Publication: The New York Times
Date: June 21, 2001
Gun shots were fired at police as
they tried to quell fresh outbreaks of violence in part of Northern Ireland's
capital Belfast overnight, police said on Friday.
At least a dozen police were injured
in a third successive night of violence in a north Belfast area where rival
Protestant and Roman Catholic communities live close together and sectarian
tensions are high.
Witnesses said the violence was
on a lower scale than the previous night, when police were forced to fire
plastic bullets to end some of the worst rioting for several years in the
British province's main city. Thirty-nine police officers were injured
in the rioting.
Northern Ireland's fragile peace
process faces a new crisis over a long-running dispute over guerrilla disarmament
between politicians from the province's Protestant majority and Catholic
minority.
In the latest violence, Protestant
and Catholic youths hurled petrol bombs, stones, fireworks and golf balls
at police. Police said three gun shots had been fired but no one was hit.
A school was set ablaze.
Trouble spread to other parts of
north Belfast. Three police officers were injured when they were pelted
with stones as they tried to separate rival Protestant and Catholic crowds.
Britain and the Irish Republic have
launched a new push to get the stalled peace process back on track, but
the disarmament issue remains as thorny as ever despite cease-fires by
mainstream guerrilla groups such as the Irish Republican Army.
Irish Republic Prime Minister Bertie
Ahern has said a move by the IRA was crucial in the next few days if the
peace process was to survive.
The IRA has opened up some of its
dumps for international inspection, but Protestant politicians say this
is not enough.
Northern Ireland's power-sharing
assembly, set up under the landmark 1998 Good Friday peace accord, will
be plunged into a crisis at the end of this month if leading Protestant
politician David Trimble carries out a threat to quit as first minister
if there is no IRA disarmament.
Trimble, the main Protestant leader
backing the peace process, has been weakened by electoral setbacks and
his resignation would come at an unstable time of the year in Northern
Ireland when Protestants stage annual marches across the province to celebrate
centuries-old battlefield victories over Catholics.
