BELFAST (Reuters) - The leader of Northern Ireland's pro-British Protestants, David Trimble, secured backing from his party on Saturday to seek re-election as head of the province's power sharing government, keeping peace hopes alive. (Read photo caption below)Political analysts view Trimble's return to the post of first minister as vital to shore up a peace process that was given a major boost this week by the Irish Republican Army's start to disarmament.
Trimble, who hailed the IRA arms move as a breakthrough, still faces a knife-edge vote for the first minister post next Friday, with many Protestant politicians opposed to the province's peace accord and skeptical about the amount of weapons actually destroyed by the IRA.
Trimble said he now expected the votes of all 28 Assembly members from his Ulster Unionist Party (UUP).
``The stakes are high, the margin, I dare say, might be narrow, but there have been narrow margins before,'' he said. ''And in the famous words of Harold Wilson (former British Prime Minister) one vote is enough.''
But the political developments were overshadowed by overnight rioting in north Belfast, which left an 18-year-old British soldier seriously hurt when a bomb was thrown by pro-British Protestants during clashes with police near a Catholic primary school.
Euphoria felt in London, Dublin and Washington over the IRA's arms-shedding has failed to quell the festering rancor that has haunted Northern Ireland for generations of feuding between Protestants who want to remain within the United Kingdom, and Roman Catholics, who want a united Irish republic.
PHOTO CAPTION:
Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble speaks to the media at the Ulster Unionist headquarters in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Saturday, Oct. 27, 2001. Trimble won the official backing Saturday of Northern Ireland's largest Protestant party in a bid to reclaim his position atop a shaky coalition government. (AP Photo/Peter Morrison)