Northern Ireland Politicians Resume Efforts to Save Peace

Talks to preserve Northern Ireland's peace accord resumed Friday between the British and Irish governments after clashes between Catholics and riot police day left more than 100 police officers and many rioters injured.

Leaders of the five parties in Northern Ireland's coalition government met in England. Protestants threatened to collapse the government unless the Irish Republican Army began to disarm under the terms of the 1998 peace pact.

Gerry Adams, leader of the IRA-linked Sinn Fein Party, said that the IRA would not disarm until Britain agreed to military cutbacks.

"We have signed up to and want to see the gun removed from Irish politics," Adams said.

Seamus Mallon, the senior Catholic representative at the meetings, praised British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern for their efforts to strike a deal, saying that the coalition parties "owe it to [the prime ministers] to leave here with the type of agreement that will allow the Good Friday agreement to survive."

The talks, which adjourned around midnight, are scheduled to resume Saturday.

Earlier Friday, more than 100 cops and many rioters were hurt in Northern Ireland early Friday as Roman Catholic protesters clashed with police after a day of Protestant marches.

The rioting was some of the province's worst in years.

The violence broke out hours after the Orange Order, Northern Ireland's biggest Protestant fraternal organization, staged hundreds of processions in villages, towns and cities to celebrate a Protestant military victory over Catholic forces in 1690. Some marches skirted close to Catholic areas; others featured virulent anti-Catholic rhetoric.

Protestants describe the parades as a celebration of their cultural heritage; Catholics call them a provocation.

As night fell, frustrations boiled over. When Protestant marchers passed by a run-down Catholic neighborhood in north Belfast, residents tried to block their path and wound up in a pitched battle with riot police. Rioters rained hundreds of firebombs and bricks on officers in riot gear, injuring dozens of them; police fought back with water cannons and 48 rounds of plastic bullets.

It was the worst fighting in the wake of the annual "Twelfth" parades — the highlight of Northern Ireland's flashpoint summertime "marching season" — that the province has seen in five years.

Police said at least 113 officers were hurt in fighting that erupted when about 200 Catholic protesters confronted police on the edge of Ardoyne, a low-income neighborhood of red-brick terrace houses.

Nineteen officers required hospital treatment, including two who were set afire by firebombs. By Friday morning, only two officers remained hospitalized, police said.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.