* Police body says period most challenging in last decade
* Analysts say lack of numbers limits risks to peace process
* Rioting enters fourth night as number arrested rises to 70
(Adds details of fourth night of rioting, community meetings)
BELFAST, Jan 6 (Reuters) – Pro-British militant groups are
instigating riots that have rocked the Northern Irish capital
Belfast in the past month, a police officers’ representative
said on Sunday as officers came under attack again.
The violence stems from protests over the removal of the
British flag over Belfast City Hall. It has been among the
province’s worst since a 1998 peace accord ended 30 years of
conflict in which Catholic nationalists seeking union with
Ireland fought British forces and mainly Protestant loyalists.
Fireworks, bottles and bricks were flung at officers for a
fourth successive night on Sunday although a police spokeswoman
said the trouble was not on the scale of the previous night,
when police came under attack with petrol bombs and gunfire.
By Sunday, 70 people had been arrested, including a
38-year-old man detained on Saturday on suspicion of attempted
murder over the shooting.
Police had said that members of pro-British militant groups
helped to orchestrate and had taken part in the first wave of
violence in early December. The Police Federation for Northern
Ireland (PFNI) said the recent attacks showed this was now
clearly the case.
“What it quite clearly demonstrates is the fact that
paramilitaries have hijacked this flags protest issue and they
have now turned their guns on the police,” federation chairman
Terry Spence told BBC radio.
“It is very clear that there are leading members of the UVF
(Ulster Volunteer Force) who are exploiting this and are
organising and orchestrating this violence against police
officers who are out there trying to uphold the law and prevent
anarchy on our streets.”
Both the UVF and Northern Ireland’s other main loyalist
militant group, the Ulster Freedom Fighters, ceased hostilities
in 2007 and decommissioned their stocks of weapons following the
signing of the peace deal.
At least 3,600 people were killed in the 30 years of
violence before the 1998 peace deal.
In scenes that recalled that earlier strife, pro-British
loyalists began rioting in early December after a vote by mostly
nationalist pro-Irish councillors to end the century-old
tradition of flying Britain’s Union flag from the city hall.
“NO STOMACH FOR THIS”
Analysts said that, although the violence was worrying, the
small numbers of protesters indicated they might be unable to
develop any strength.
“Clearly the violence is a step up in terms of what’s
happened more recently but they’re simply not getting people out
on the street,” said Peter Shirlow, a professor at Queen’s
University who has spoken with protesters in recent days.
“Protestants are annoyed about the flag but they’re even
more annoyed about the violence. There’s no stomach for this,
that mass mobilisation is just not there anymore.”
The police federation’s Spence said, however, that it was
the most challenging time for police in a decade. Church leaders
and community workers held talks behind the scenes on Sunday to
try to quell the violence.
Militant Irish nationalists, responsible for the killings of
three police officers and two soldiers since an increase in
tensions from 2009, have also not reacted violently to the flag
protests, limiting any threat to the 15 years of peace.
The British-controlled province’s first minister, Peter
Robinson, said on Friday that rioters were playing into the
hands of nationalist groups who would seek to exploit every
opportunity “to further their terror aims”.
The moderate nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party
(SDLP) party said on Sunday that shots had been fired using a
ball-bearing gun at the house of one its councillors in Belfast,
shattering windows.
(Reporting by Eamonn Mallie and Padraic Halpin; Editing by
Angus MacSwan and Jason Webb)
