NORTHERN IRELAND: The Violent End of a Fragile Truce

IT was perhaps the most disastrous week in Northern Ireland in the past three years. First the Belfast leadership of the I.R.A.'s militant Provisional wing forced a showdown with the British army, thereby breaking the fragile cease-fire that had lasted for only 13 days. Then, in an effort to control the rising terrorism, Britain's Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, William Whitelaw, ordered three battalions of soldiers to invade the I.R.A.'s "nogo" district of Andersonstown to put down gunmen who had been attacking an army command post for the past four days....