BELFAST, Northern Ireland — The Protestant and Catholic leaders of Northern Ireland mounted an exceptional display of unity against rising violence from Irish Republican Army dissidents — and vowed Tuesday to defeat hard-liners with the power of popular will.
Former IRA commander Martin McGuinness, who long hoped that slaying police officers would help him achieve his dream of a united Ireland, stood shoulder to shoulder with his Protestant partner atop the government, Peter Robinson, and Northern Ireland police commander Hugh Orde.
McGuinness pledged his personal support to the English police chief and demanded that his own police-loathing supporters abandon their traditional code of silence and expose the IRA dissidents in their Irish Catholic communities.
McGuinness called the dissidents, who’ve killed two British soldiers and a policeman over since Saturday — the first such killings in more than a decade — “traitors to the island of Ireland.”
Analysts said the dissidents’ dramatic escalation of bloodshed was designed to divide and undermine McGuinness and Robinson as they embarked on their most significant foreign mission: a planned 10-day tour of the U.S. culminating at the White House on St. Patrick’s Day to meet President Barack Obama.
