Protestants march, Catholics rally as traditional tensions flare in Belfast

Monday, April 1st 2002, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) _ Hard-line Protestants marched and Catholic militants commemorated their dead Monday as traditional Easter tensions flared in Northern Ireland, particularly in Belfast.

On the capital's bitter north side, Catholic protesters shouted curses at a passing parade of Protestants from the Apprentice Boys brotherhood, which stages small but noisy parades each Monday after Easter.

In recent years, Catholics have protested against any Protestant marches that go near or through their turf, arguing that the demonstrations are designed to intimidate Catholics.

Riot police prevented the Catholic protesters from blocking the drum-thumping procession, which took a few minutes to pass the hostile Catholic district of Ardoyne, the focal point for regular rioting since another Protestant parade triggered violence last June. Earlier Monday, British army explosives experts conducted a controlled explosion on a suspicious package left on the parade route, but it turned out to be a hoax.

In south Belfast, police this time prevented Apprentice Boys from crossing a bridge to reach another Catholic district called Lower Ormeau, which was the first militant Catholic area to begin blocking Protestant parades in the early 1990s.

The Protestants offered a minute's silence in memory of Queen Mother Elizabeth, who died Saturday, and boarded nearby buses to take them away from the confrontation zone.

But street violence flared elsewhere. On the Limestone Road in north Belfast _ where Catholics tend to live on one side of the street, Protestants on the other _ rival gangs traded salvos of rocks, bricks and bottles.

It was the third straight day of unrest in the area. On Saturday night, somebody threw a homemade pipe bomb from the Protestant side of the divide at a police armored car. The blast injured nobody seriously.

At a rally commemorating Irish Republican Army dead, meanwhile, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams told a crowd of Catholics in north Belfast they shouldn't support or join the predominantly Protestant police.

The IRA spent 27 years killing police officers before calling a 1997 cease-fire. Its Sinn Fein party is involved in a new Catholic-Protestant government for Northern Ireland but is refusing to take part in a new board overseeing police reforms. Both the government and police reform were important goals of the 1998 peace accord here.

``Does anyone here think that any of the youngsters here have any desire to make a career out of policing?'' Adams asked the crowd, some of whom responded with laughter, others with shouts of ``No!''

Elsewhere, police launched renewed raids in Poleglass, a militant Catholic district on the western outskirts of Belfast, in search of secret anti-terrorist documents that were stolen from a Belfast police station two weeks ago.

Police on Saturday arrested six people, including at least two paroled IRA prisoners, on suspicion of involvement in the theft, one of the most embarrassing security lapses in Northern Irish history. But five of the six were freed without charge Sunday and Monday.

The documents are alleged to contain details about police agents and informers. Adams said British agents had mounted the raid themselves and were trying to ``scapegoat'' the IRA.