N. Ireland politicians miss power-sharing deadline

BELFAST, Saturday (AP) - Leaders of the Northern Ireland Assembly missed a long-billed deadline to strike a power-sharing deal and then fled as the province's most infamous militant stormed the building with a bagful of pipe bombs.

Two security guards trapped Michael Stone -- an icon of Protestant extremism because of his solo grenade-and-gun attack on an Irish Republican Army funeral in 1988 -- halfway inside the brass revolving door of Stormont Parliamentary Building on Friday.

Stone, a long-feared figure who boasts of his desire to kill Sinn Fein leaders, screamed ''No surrender!'' as one guard twisted Stone's arm and another pulled a handgun from his jacket.

British army experts using remote-controlled robots later discovered at least six working pipe bombs inside a bag he was carrying, police said.

''Today could be a defining moment, not least because a serious attempt to kill and injure people in this parliament building was only averted by the bravery of staff members. Now we need to match that bravery,'' said Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, whose IRA-linked party represents most of the Catholic minority in Northern Ireland.

Stone's thwarted attack overshadowed an already bizarre day in Northern Ireland's struggle to forge a Catholic-Protestant administration, the central aim of the Good Friday peace accord of 1998.

The British and Irish prime ministers, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, had spent months insisting that Friday, Nov. 24, would be their final, non-negotiable deadline for the major Protestant party, the Democratic Unionists, to forge a coalition with their Sinn Fein enemies. The premiers reluctantly retreated from that ultimatum when negotiations failed to break the Sinn Fein-Democratic Unionist deadlock.

The Democratic Unionist leader, Ian Paisley, rejected point-blank the prime ministers' latest watered-down demand -- that he must accept a nomination to be the eventual leader of a power-sharing administration by Friday, although he wouldn't have to take up the post yet.

Instead Paisley, an 80-year-old evangelist who has been a bulwark against compromise with Catholics throughout the four-decade conflict over this British territory, told the Northern Ireland Assembly that the time was not yet right.

Paisley, repeating a months-old position, said he would cooperate only after Sinn Fein formally recognizes the authority of the police force and British justice in Northern Ireland.

''Clearly, as Sinn Fein is not yet ready to take the decisive step forward on policing, the Democratic Unionist Party is not required to commit to any aspect of power-sharing in advance of such certainty. The circumstances have not been reached where there can be a nomination or a designation this day,'' Paisley said as Adams sat stone-faced across the chamber.

Underlying his desperation to sustain another round of negotiations, Blair welcomed Paisley's words as offering hope of an eventual breakthrough before another batch of supposed deadlines. Blair has planned a new Assembly election March 7, and hopes its members will elect the full administration a week later. Britain would hand it control of 13 Northern Ireland departments on March 26.