CASTLEBELLINGHAM, Ireland (AP) - With dissident violence on the rise and deadlines looming, Sinn Fein insisted Friday it felt no pressure to deliver Irish Republican Army disarmament, which must start soon to save Northern Ireland's power-sharing administration.Following a lengthy strategy session, leaders of the IRA-linked party said British plans unveiled this week to slash its military garrison and reshape Northern Ireland's police force - key Catholic demands - appeared too little to merit a matching IRA move.
But Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said his party expected to receive more detail of British intentions in a meeting Saturday with the Northern Ireland secretary, John Reid, who on Friday briefed other parties in the province's unraveling Catholic-Protestant coalition. (Read photo caption below)
Britain pledged in this week's document to pursue ``a progressive rolling program reducing levels of troops and installations in Northern Ireland.'' It named four bases for speedy closure, but tied wider moves to a decline in the terrorist threat.
In an apparent effort to limit both sides' room for maneuver, IRA dissidents shortly after midnight Friday detonated a car bomb in London, wounding seven people. That followed a failed dissident effort Wednesday to blast Northern Ireland's main airport with a similar device.
Adams said the dissidents, some of them former colleagues before the IRA cease-fire of 1997, should stop.
Some of those surrounding Adams were early architects of the IRA's bombing attacks on the British capital, most notably Gerry Kelly, who at age 19 was convicted for the group's very first car bombs outside the Old Bailey courthouse and Scotland Yard in 1973.
Kelly said the latest London bomb was ``absolutely wrong,'' but pinned blame for that on Britain, too. ``These so-called dissidents wouldn't be in business if Britain had fulfilled its promises,'' he said.
For months, Britain has been trying to broker a new deal that finally achieves a start to IRA disarmament, an unfulfilled part of the Good Friday peace accord of 1998. That landmark deal inspired a four-party administration for Northern Ireland that includes Sinn Fein.
The major Protestant party, the Ulster Unionists, agreed to work alongside Sinn Fein on condition that IRA disarmament followed. They now insist their coalition will end by Aug. 12 if the IRA doesn't move. That date is the deadline for the administration's top Protestant post to be filled following last month's resignation of Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble as ``first minister.''
The Ulster Unionists are also deeply concerned by Britain's intention to slash army numbers from their current 13,500 in Northern Ireland, and even more so to reshape the mostly Protestant police force, the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
Reg Empey, the senior Ulster Unionist remaining in Northern Ireland's administration, met Britain's Reid to discuss police reform plans. Afterward Empey said much of what he had heard was ``absolute nonsense. The amount of stupidity that I have heard talked about policing in recent months has been, I think, the worst I have ever heard.''
Empey and others have argued that with the risk of civil disorder running so high it is a poor time to weaken the province's defenses.
Almost nightly since June, police have been confronting rival Catholic and Protestant rioters, particularly in north Belfast, and suffering more than 150 injuries in the process.
On Friday police seized five pipebombs, a homemade grenade and 300 rounds of ammunition in the north Belfast district of Ballysillan, where support for an outlawed anti-Catholic group, the Ulster Defense Association, runs high. Detectives later arrested two men in connection with the latest killing blamed on the UDA, last Sunday's drive-by shooting of an 18-year-old Protestant outside a Catholic sports club.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams, left, with party collegue Martin Ferris, speak to the media at Castlebellingham Castle Hotel in the Republic of Ireland, Friday Aug. 3, 2001. Sinn Fein leaders said Friday they were "not impressed" with a joint British-Irish plan to inspire Irish Republican Army disarmament, the long-unresolved issue unraveling Northern Ireland's 1998 peace accord. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)
- Aug 03 11:46 AM ET