BELFAST, Oct 18: In a deep setback to Northern Ireland’s peace process, all five Protestant ministers in the province’s executive decided to resign their posts on Thursday in response to the Irish Republican Army’s (IRA) failure to disarm.

David Trimble, leader of the main Protestant party, said three ministers from his moderate Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) were to be joined in their resignation by two ministers from the Democratic Unionist Party, Northern Ireland’s main hardline Protestant party.

The move had been expected, as Trimble has for weeks threatened to force the collapse of Northern Ireland’s power-sharing institutions by withdrawing his party from the executive in the absence of an IRA disarmament initiative.

“The IRA had not only failed to decommission, but it has continued to engage in violence and murder along with loyalist (Protestant) paramilitaries,” Trimble said.

“This is therefore a blatant breach of the terms of the agreement and the standards required of a movement which has members holding ministerial office,” he said, referring to the 1998 “Good Friday” peace accord between the two communities.

“This decision will take effect from midnight tonight,” Trimble said.

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern described the resignations as a “disappointment” and a “setback” but said they need not be irrevocable.

“I firmly hope that the UUP ministers will be able to resume their positions as quickly as possible,” he said.

“I am in close contact with prime minister (Tony Blair) and we will meet at the EU Summit (in Ghent, Belgium) tomorrow. We urgently need to make progress now,” he said.

Ireland’s Foreign Minister Brian Cowen was to meet Britain’s Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid on Friday to consider the next move.

The Good Friday agreement was supposed to end decades of sectarian conflict by apportioning power between Protestants and Catholics.

Trimble said Reid now had seven days, as set out in the constitution, to decide whether to suspend the power-sharing government, assembly and other political institutions or to permit their collapse and call fresh elections.

Suspension has already been tried three times, and dismally failed to work.

But a fresh vote, if general elections held in June are anything to go by, might only produce more gains for hardline parties, making a future compromise even less likely.

The executive’s remaining five ministers are made up of Catholics — three from the moderate Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and two from Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political wing.

The IRA has so far only allowed international monitors to inspect some of its arms dumps, while pledging its commitment to putting weapons “completely and verifiably beyond use”.

It is believed that the most likely gesture on disarmament would be to pour concrete into the dumps.

Even that move, however, would be a huge step to take for a movement built on the notion that Britain is an occupying force in Northern Ireland and must be expelled militarily rather than through negotiation.

Republicans are focusing on a shopping-list of demands, which they say are essential if disarmament is to happen.

They include radical reforms to the province’s Protestant-dominated police force and a drastic scaling-down of Britain’s military presence.

Northern Ireland’s overwhelmingly Catholic republicans want the province united with the Irish Republic, while the mostly Protestant unionists want it to remain a part of Britain.—AFP