The World: Ulster: Steering Toward Civil War?

"We believe Ireland is one country, one nation, one people. I think it is both small enough and big enough to live together. Ireland was one for centuries and was divided only in the last 50 years."

SO said John Lynch, Prime Minister of the Irish Republic, after two days of emergency talks with British Prime Minister Edward Heath. Held at Chequers, the country residence of Britain's Prime Ministers, the meetings dealt with the current civil strife in the British province of Northern Ireland. The talks did nothing to bring Ireland's Catholic South and Protestant North any closer to union. But they did produce an unprecedented concession from the British government: an invitation to the Irish Prime Minister to participate in tripartite discussions with Heath and Northern Ireland's Prime Minister Brian Faulkner over the critical situation in Ulster.

In a parallel move, British Home Secretary Reginald Maudling invited representatives of Ulster's Catholic community to a round-table conference with the province's Protestant leaders. The conference's purpose: to consider reforms that would give the Catholics (who constitute about one-third of Ulster's 1,500,000 population) "an active, permanent and guaranteed role in the life and public affairs of the province." Maudling specified, however, that the conference would not discuss "the constitutional position of Northern Ireland as part of the United Kingdom"—a reassurance to Ulster's Protestants, who nervously scrutinize any dealings between London and Dublin for signs of a "sellout" of the province.

In Jeopardy. It was Ulster's Catholics, however, not its Protestants, who placed the British-sponsored round-table talks in jeopardy. Both of the province's two main opposition parties rejected any such meeting until the Protestant-dominated Stormont government rescinds the internment of 250 Catholic militants who have been jailed without trial for over a month. Bernadette Devlin, who was back on the political stump for the first time since her daughter was born out of wedlock three weeks ago, declared she had "no intention of discussing anything with Maudling until every last man who is at present interned has been released." But one leading Catholic moderate condemned his coreligionists' refusal to attend talks. "We are on the verge of the most appalling bloodshed," said Oliver Napier, vice chairman of the nonsectarian Alliance Party, "and yet you are not prepared to get around a table and discuss issues on which many lives may depend. You are steering straight toward civil war."