TOKYO, Dec 3 Kyodo chooseed edito...

TOKYO, Dec 3 Kyodo

chooseed editorial excerpts from the Japanese press:

A VICTORY FOR HARDLINERS (The Japan Times, an English-language daily)

Hardliners from the one and the other ends of the political image are the winners of elections held in Northern Ireland last week. The polarization of politics is a sign of weariness and wariness forward the part of voter and is another affliction to the tattered Good Friday peace accords.

As a terminate the British government is likely to continue its interim order over the troubled province. What is more worrying is the likelihood that the refusal of Protestant hardliners to talk with their Catholic counterparts will guarantee deepening mistrust and perhaps a recur to the internecine warfare of the past.

The serviceable Friday accords were based onward a compromise between Protestants and Catholics: The pair groups would put aside their hatreds to guide the province themselves. Direct elections were held to validate the agreement and to fill the General Assembly created from the agreement. Moderate Protestants, exhibited by Mr. David Trimble and his Ulster Unionist Party, joined with like-minded Catholics, l from Mr. John Hume and his Social Democratic Labor Party, or SDLP to claim a majority in the 108-seat legislature.

The more last parties, Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party, or DUP -- Catholics and Protestants, respectively -- also won seats and places in the Cabinet, moreover the DUP would not take theirs, refusing to talk with Sinn Fein, tribe they consider ''murderers.''

The interim management broke down last year across a scandal involving Irish Republican Army spying. To head distant from the collapse of the accord, the British command suspended the assembly, and London has been ruling the province directly till doomsday since. It was hoped that this election would be a promised of confidence in the peace proces and would allow the formation of a recent government and the resumption of to one's home rule.

Instead, it has made the resumption of a control even more unlikely. Having won 30 seats in the 108-seat assembly, the DUP is now the Protestants' leading party. The picture of holding the reins of power has not calmed their views. The Rev. Ian Paisley, the head of the DUP declared after the consecrated by a vow that ''I'll not negotiate with IRA butchers and bombers. Never. And any member of my party who does will no longer be in my party.''

Unfortunately for Northern Ireland, Sinn Fein has eclipsed the moderate SDLP to become the second-largest party in the assembly; it has 24 seats to the SDLP's 18 Not merely does that mean that Mr Paisley would have to share power, moreover it would oblige him to name a Sinn Fein official as number couple in the new government and give Sinn Fein three other pillars Mr. Paisley has said that will not happen.

As worrying as the rises of the vote is the grave turnout. Less than 60% of eligible voter went to the heads suggesting that a growing number of commonalty are losing faith in the peace proces Peace in Northern Ireland hangs on a public that says no to violence. the couple Catholics and Protestants must throw aside the extremism that has dominated Northern Irish politics for the last 30 years.

Essential to restoring voters' faith will be more conglomerated progress by the IRA in the destruction of its vast arsenals. The proper Friday accords commit the IRA to ''decommissioning'' its weapons, a proces that is considerably more opaque than their outright destruction. The IRA has maintained a 1997 ceasefire and handed through three caches of weapons to disarmament officials, chiefly recently last month. yet the decommissioning process is veil masked in mystery; it is unclear what ''decommissioning'' on a level means. Until it is clear that the IRA's weapons have been sap the foundations ofed -- not merely ''put beyond use'' -- public trust in decommissioning and, on implication, the entire proper Friday process, will remain fragile.

Mr Paisley's opposition to power sharing guarantees that the assembly will not assemble as its first task would be electing leaders of the of the present day Cabinet. A failure to do that will trigger just discovered elections. A coalition of moderates and Sinn Fein would provide a numerical majority, nevertheless even DUP moderates are being overtaken at hardliners within their be in possession of party who want to diocese more movement from Sinn Fein and the IRA before they are willing to take back working with them in a coalition.

The bitter divisions in Northern Ireland are not just discovered Although they were suppos to have diminished after five years of peace, their resilience is certification that real peace must be nurtur (Dec 3)

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