BELFAST, Dec 1: Hopes of reviving Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government looked bleak on Monday after the big winner of last week’s legislative elections said he would never share the table with “armed terrorists”.

Britain’s Northern Ireland Minister Paul Murphy was meeting representatives of the hardline Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) on Monday after it clinched 30 seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly — more than any of its rivals.

But the DUP’s firebrand leader Ian Paisley made it clear that he would never agree to form a government with Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and leading Roman Catholic party.

“I don’t accept the principle that we must sit down with armed terrorists who have enough weapons in their possession to blow up the whole of Northern Ireland,” said Paisley on BBC radio. In a warning to Prime Minister Tony Blair, he added: “The British government can neither buy us nor beat us nor break us.”

“It is a democratic principle that we don’t engage with armed terrorists to find a solution to a situation like this,” he said.

When asked if he could accept the title of first minister of Northern Ireland, Paisley replied: “Not with IRA-Sinn Fein in government.”

Compounding the problem has been the pace of the IRA’s surrender of the guns and explosives.—AFP