In N. Ireland, hard-liner reborn as power broker

BELFAST -- On a sunny day last June, the Rev. Ian Paisley's voice thundered like a distant storm from a beat-up loudspeaker on the sidewalk as he belted out a Christian evangelical hymn: "There is power . . . in the blood of the lamb."

At his informal prayer service, a fixture on Belfast streets for more than three decades, the 77-year-old firebrand Protestant preacher launched into one of his signature Catholic-bashing sermons, unrepentant in his belief that the pope is the "anti-Christ," and mixing hard-line politics with an even harder line on the wages of sin.

As recently as last spring, it seemed Paisley had been relegated to the past, with people on the street ignoring his diatribes against the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement that forged institutions of power sharing between Catholics and Protestants and curbed the sectarian violence.

But last week, when the British government called together all the political players in Northern Ireland for talks aimed at reviving the agreement, Paisley was at center stage. On Thursday, he met with Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain to present his party's unrelenting stand against the agreement.

And Friday, Paisley unveiled a plan to rewrite the accord, declaring that the pact "did not deliver, it was not stable, it was not accountable, it was not effective, and it certainly was not efficient." Suddenly, the fate of Northern Ireland once again lies partly in the big hands of the "Big Man," as the towering Paisley is known. He has been reborn as a power broker; attempts in recent years by London, Dublin, and Washington to push him aside have failed.

Even so, some in Belfast are wondering whether the aging Paisley may be shifting slightly, perhaps fearing that he could be marginalized by those within his Unionist movement who feel they must work within the Good Friday process to change it.

In the Nov. 26 election for the 108-member Northern Ireland Assembly created under the Good Friday agreement, Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party, or DUP, won 30 seats, the largest bloc in the chamber. Paisley thus overtook the more moderate David Trimble as leader of the unionists, those who believe Northern Ireland must remain in union with the British crown.

The other big winner in the election was Paisley's sworn enemy, Sinn Fein, the republican movement affiliated with the Irish Republican Army. Sinn Fein, which aspires to unite north and south as one Republic of Ireland free of British control, won 24 seats, up from 18.

With the two most militant extremes of Northern Ireland's political spectrum -- the DUP and Sinn Fein -- emerging as the victors of the election, Northern Ireland is once again politically deadlocked. That comes on top of an earlier crisis set off by accusations that an IRA spy ring was operating inside Stormont Castle in Belfast, seat of the Assembly, and exacerbated by British charges that the IRA was stalling on disarmament. Those disputes led to the suspension of the power-sharing assembly 18 months ago, and Northern Ireland has returned to direct rule by British ministers.

Paisley says he wants a democracy in Northern Ireland but refuses to take part in a democracy that includes the popularly elected party of Sinn Fein. In fact, Paisley refuses to hold direct talks with any member of Sinn Fein, especially its leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, who he says come from "the same filthy nest of murderous Irish nationalism."

Paisley has pledged that any member of his Democratic Unionist Party who meets with a member of Sinn Fein will be expelled. But that threat obscures the fact that DUP assembly members have worked for several years on various low-profile committees, such as agriculture, that include Sinn Fein members.

Some political observers in Northern Ireland wonder whether a change might be afoot within the DUP. Paisley recently made two significant conciliatory gestures. For the first time, he met an Irish prime minister when he sat down with Bertie Ahern last week at the Irish Embassy in London. And Paisley sat down at a negotiating table in Stormont on Wednesday only a few feet from Adams and McGuinness, although he refused to look at or speak to them.

After the meeting, McGuinness said: "For Paisley to go meet the Irish government is a change. To sit in that room with us is a change. So we're interested to see what it means."

David Ervine, leader of the Progressive Unionist Party and former commander of the Protestant paramilitary Ulster Volunteer Force, said that "the DUP is being reinvented around [Paisley's] ankles by a triumvirate of younger, ambitious men," including the party's deputy leader, Peter Robinson, and member Nigel Dodds.

Jeffrey Donaldson, who defected from Trimble's party to join the DUP after the election results that have left Trimble on the sidelines, said: "The political context changes as the years go by. So there isn't a politician in Northern Ireland who hasn't changed. But what hasn't changed for Paisley is the man's principles."

Paisley is at heart an evangelical preacher. As head of the Free Presbyterian Church of Ulster, which is blatantly anti-Catholic and has an estimated 9,000 members, Paisley often has used religious imagery to shape his apocalyptic vision of what will happen to the Protestant unionist traditions and culture in Northern Ireland if the Good Friday agreement is followed. Tied in with this view is Paisley's oft-stated claim that the pope is the "anti-Christ," a perspective that he says is grounded in his reading of the Book of Revelation and the Gospel of St. Matthew.

Critics say Paisley has a penchant for violence. He served jail time for inciting a riot. He also has been accused of encouraging Protestant paramilitary groups to commit violence, a charge he has repeatedly denied.

He is known as a politician with a loyal following, in part because he has proved to be a tireless battler for his constituents, who, as he goes out of his way to remind reporters, include Catholics.

"We can dwell forever on who is Ian Paisley," said his son, Ian Paisley Jr., an elected DUP member in the assembly who is vying to head the party and replace his father in the European Parliament if, as expected, the elder Paisley steps down. "But in the end of the day, his life is an open book.

"The governments tried to bypass him and sideline him. But they couldn't do it. So now he has come to embody all those who felt bypassed and sidelined by this agreement. . . . He has come to embody the fact that this agreement can't work without people on the unionist side trusting it. You can't have a future in Northern Ireland that excludes Ian Paisley."

These days, the elder Paisley is being shielded from the media. But last June, a Globe reporter watched him deliver a fire-and-brimstone sermon on the street, in which he proclaimed: "All sins must be punished before they can be forgiven. If you were brought before God today for judgment, what would be your answer?"

Belfast shoppers and workers ignored him or rolled their eyes and snickered as he shouted: "Thank God this agreement is in trouble. If we do not destroy this agreement, we will be destroyed forever."

After the sermon, the reporter asked Paisley whether he had sought forgiveness for any of his views that have offended Catholics and, some argue, fueled the sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.

Clutching a leather-bound, pocket Bible, Paisley said: "I have many things to ask forgiveness for. But I wouldn't say I've done anything wrong. You can do a right thing roughly. But it is better to do that than a wrong thing smoothly."