Britain: Group ruined truce in N. Ireland

BELFAST -- A major outlawed Protestant group in Northern Ireland has abandoned its 11-year-old truce and is an enemy of the peace once again, Britain declared today in a long-expected verdict against the Ulster Volunteer Force.

The British governor, Peter Hain, said he has evidence that the UVF, an underground group supposed to be bolstering Northern Ireland's Good Friday peace accord with a 1994 cease-fire, committed four killings this summer and launched multiple gun and grenade attacks this week against the police and British Army.

Hain's Northern Ireland Office said in a statement that UVF members' violence ''amounted to a breakdown in their cease-fire" and meant that, as of midnight, Britain no longer accepted it as valid.

The move followed three nights of Protestant riots that ravaged much of Belfast and other Northern Ireland towns.

Police commanders said the UVF and a larger Protestant paramilitary group, the Ulster Defense Association, both attacked police and British troops with assault-rifle fire and homemade grenades in what have been the worst Protestant riots for nearly a decade.

But Hain said Britain would continue to recognize the validity of the UDA's own 1994 cease-fire, partly because that group has not been linked to any recent killings.

The rioting, which exploded each night from Saturday to yesterday morning, left at least 60 police officers and several dozen civilians wounded. The trigger -- British authorities' refusal Saturday to allow Protestants to parade along the edge of Catholic west Belfast -- capped years of growing Protestant opposition to the landmark 1998 peace accord.

Police arrested 63 suspected rioters, more than half of whom have already been charged with crimes ranging from hijacking to attempted murder.

The UDA, in hopes of avoiding any punitive sanctions from Britain, announced yesterday that its estimated 3,000 members would ''avoid any confrontation on the streets and steer away from any acts of violence." It conceded that the rioting had damaged only their own impoverished Protestant power bases.

The smaller, usually better-disciplined UVF remained silent, apparently resigned to Britain's negative cease-fire ruling.

British recognition of an outlawed group's truce brings both symbolic and practical benefits.

The public representatives of truce-observing groups are entitled to a place in negotiations, while those deemed not on cease-fire are barred. Also, convicted members of groups with British-recognized truces received early prison paroles as part of the 1998 peace deal -- and UVF parolees now could find themselves being thrown back behind bars.

Hain was expected at a Belfast news conference today.