Belfast Violence Flares Amid Parade Tensions

BELFAST, Northern Ireland —  Anti-Catholic extremists menaced the streets of Northern Ireland for a second night Tuesday, with masked youths in hard-line Protestant neighborhoods hijacking and setting vehicles on fire and police exchanging shots with gunmen in a Protestant area of Belfast, the provincial capital.

Rage flared in the British territory, bracing for what is expected to be a week of violent Protestant revolt over British authorities’ determination to restrict traditional Protestant parades in Roman Catholic areas.

Near the volatile town of Portadown, 25 miles southwest of Belfast, police used water cannons--rarely deployed in Northern Ireland--to disperse several hundred people protesting the banning of a Protestant march planned for Sunday through a Catholic neighborhood.

The paramilitary outlaws coordinating the mayhem from behind the scenes have warned that rioting will intensify if the Orange Order, a legal Protestant fraternal group, isn’t allowed to conduct the banned march through the main Catholic district of Portadown. Britain and the province’s police commander, Chief Constable Ronnie Flanagan, say that won’t be allowed to happen.

Confrontations over Orangemen’s thwarted efforts to parade down the disputed Garvaghy Road in Portadown, ignited widespread violence in 1996, 1997 and 1998.

Relative peace reigned last year after Orange leaders opted not to challenge a police blockade at the march’s midway point, an Anglican church near the Catholic area. But history appears set to repeat itself.

Politicians Tuesday criticized Johnny “Mad Dog” Adair, a leading Belfast member of the outlawed Ulster Defense Assn. who was paroled from prison this year under the terms of Northern Ireland’s 1998 peace accord.

The Royal Ulster Constabulary said police returned gunfire after they were fired on from an area near lower Shankhill Road, where Adair is Ulster Defense Assn. commander.

There were no reports of injuries.

Both the Ulster Defense Assn. and the Loyalist Volunteer Force are supposed to be observing cease-fires, as is the pro-Catholic Irish Republican Army.