A missile apparently launched by the Irish Republican Army blasted a British helicopter out of the sky Saturday, hours after a pro-British party leader blamed persistent IRA violence for killing peace efforts for the troubled province.
The missile struck the army helicopter as it prepared to land at a British army barracks in Crossmaglen, a Roman Catholic border town 50 miles southwest of Belfast. Police said one officer aboard was seriously wounded; the army pilot and two crewmen leaped to safety.No one claimed responsibility for the attack, but Crossmaglen is noted for having frequent ambushes by the outlawed IRA.
The attack brought into sharp focus growing frustration over the lack of progress in Anglo-Irish efforts to bring peace to Northern Ireland.
A Dec. 15 declaration by the British and Irish prime ministers, John Major and Albert Reynolds, offered the IRA's legal political ally, Sinn Fein, a place in peace talks if the IRA first ended its 24-year campaign of violence against British rule of Northern Ireland.
Sinn Fein has not accepted the offer, saying the IRA should not have to make any unilateral moves.
"It is now commonly accepted fact, within and beyond the Ulster Unionist Party, that the joint declaration has now run its course," James Molyneaux told the ruling council of his Protestant-based, pro-British party earlier Saturday.
Sir Patrick Mayhew, the chief British official in Northern Ireland, criticized Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams for failing to reject IRA violence.
"For all the carefully crafted talk of peace, only death and threats of death have been delivered by the IRA - with not a word of dismay, let alone denunciation, from Mr. Adams," Mayhew told Conservative Party supporters in southeast England.
He suggested anti-IRA sentiment had grown in the United States since Adams' visit to New York last month. Over British objections, President Clinton granted Adams a 48-hour visa to try to encourage acceptance of the Anglo-Irish declaration.
"The generosity of the visa gesture, and the willingness to hear Mr. Adams, have been spurned," Mayhew said.
Molyneaux, who grudgingly supported the December declaration, dismissed its potential to wean the IRA from violence.
He said the IRA's killings this year of two police officers in Belfast and three recent mortar attacks on London's Heathrow Airport proved there was "no mileage to be gained in seeking to accommodate the terrorists."