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Date Posted: 20:34:30 06/08/08 Sun GMT
Author: Lynn
Subject: Robinson succeeds Paisley in NI (Baltimore Sun)


www.baltimoresun.com/news/nation/bal-te.nireland06jun06,0,5977739.story

baltimoresun.com

Robinson succeeds Paisley in N. Ireland

New leader pledges to 'secure the peace' with Catholics

Associated Press

June 6, 2008

BELFAST, Northern Ireland


Northern Ireland's new power-sharing leader declared yesterday that Irish Catholics and British Protestants must "secure the peace" by removing all traces of paramilitary extremism from their divided communities.
"We must learn from the past. We must not live in it," First Minister Peter Robinson told the Northern Ireland Assembly after his undisputed promotion to the top of the province's 13-month-old coalition.
Robinson, 59, succeeded Protestant preacher Ian R. Paisley, his mentor in the Democratic Unionist Party. Politicians from all sides paid tribute to Paisley, 82, a legendary hard-liner who stunned observers last year by sitting down in government alongside Sinn Fein, the public face of the outlawed Irish Republican Army.
Robinson's rise comes against a backdrop of rising tensions with Sinn Fein, the major Catholic party in the coalition.
Sinn Fein had threatened to block his appointment - a move that could have triggered the collapse of power-sharing - but relented after the Democratic Unionists agreed to open immediate negotiations under the direction of British Prime Minister Gordon Brown. Those talks begin today in London and seek to resolve several arguments undermining their partnership.
The key deadlock is over forming a new Justice Department for Northern Ireland that would receive powers from Britain to oversee the police and courts. Britain had hoped to transfer control last month under terms of a 2006 plan to revive power-sharing, but that deadline was missed.
Protestants oppose the power transfer, in part because of Sinn Fein's preferred candidate for justice minister: Gerry Kelly, who helped plant the IRA's first London car bombs in 1973.
The Democratic Unionists say they might agree - if the IRA takes a final symbolic step toward oblivion by disbanding its commanding "army council." The IRA, which renounced violence and disarmed in 2005, continues to exist as a controlling force in the most hard-line Catholic areas.


Copyright © 2008, The Baltimore Sun

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