Irish moves attacked

Press, 12 November 1981, Page 7

Irish moves attacked

NZPA London The British and Irish Prime Ministers seeking to improve Anglo-Irish relations were denounced yesterday by critics in their own Parliaments, while in Brit-ish-ruled Northern Ireland the sectarian conflict between Protestants and Roman Catholics claimed yet another life. The police in Armagh city reported that a former member of the Ulster Defence Regiment was shot dead as night fell, the fourth attack in two days on the predominantly Protestant militia. He was the 118th U.D.R. member or former member killed since the regiment was formed in 1971. In other attacks in the border region with the Irish Republic, two U.D.R. men were shot and seriously wounded on Tuesday and yesterday and the teenage son of a third was killed at the week-end by a boobytrap bomb in his father’s car. After the last attack the I.R.A. apologised, saying the bomb had been meant for the boy’s father. In the House of Commons in London, Margaret Thatcher was called a “traitor and a liar” by the Protestant hard-liner, lan Paisley, when she said that last week’s agreement with the Irish Prime Minister (Dr Garret Fitzgerald) to set up an Anglo-Irish council “involves no change whatever in the constitutional position.” In the Dail, the Irish Parliament in Dublin. Dr Fitzgerald was accused by the former Prime Minister, Charles Haughey, of overoptimism about the council, which Mr Haughey said had not altered the Northern Ireland problem “one jot.” Dr Fitzgerald told the Dail that his London talks with Mrs Thatcher brought the two Governments close to agreement He said the key achievements were the setting up of the intergovernmental Anglo-Irish council to develop relations and a new pledge by Britain on the eventual unity of Ireland if a majority in the north agreed.