Protestant fear 'used as excuse for killing': Church leader warns of new tensions in Ulster

DEEP unresolved concerns among law-abiding Protestants in Northern Ireland about their future have allowed loyalist paramilitaries to claim an excuse for new heights of 'vicious and indiscriminate' violence, Archbishop Robin Eames, the Church of Ireland Primate, warned yesterday.

Describing the 'frightening' degrees of support for terrorist organisations, Dr Eames said Protestants had to reject the sharply increasing 'so- called loyalist' attacks with as much determination as they had condemned republican violence. He told the annual General Synod of the Church of Ireland in Dublin that uncertainty about the future among ordinary decent Protestants had to be addressed. Their attitudes reflected a feeling that 'years of IRA terrorism has been directed largely against them', he said.

Later he said the sense of vulnerability and isolation among the Protestant border community, who faced a more and more sectarian IRA campaign, meant they were 'quite uncertain as to who their real friends are'. This was creating 'tensions that would not normally be there'.

He appealed to political parties in Northern Ireland to keep dialogue alive to help restore stability. London and Dublin each had to demonstrate respect for the legitimacy of both traditions in the North.

Last week he claimed the uncertainty among many Protestants now matched that felt by northern Catholics in the Sixties. But he deplored attempts by some Unionist leaders to interpret Protestant alienation as a justification for restricting equality for Catholics with their neighbours.

He recalled that in the past he had appealed to Protestants to understand the grievances of the Catholic community on housing, employment and equal opportunities.

'What I am now saying is that we have got to try and get equal treatment right across the board for both communities. The process of meeting grievance in one community must not result in the growth of grievance in another.'

A gunman wearing a Rangers football shirt tried to murder three workmen in east Belfast yesterday. He fired at their car as they arrived at the site of a new nursing home on the King's Road. The men, two Catholics and a Protestant, escaped unhurt.

Earlier a 31-year-old Catholic was shot and injured at Newtownabbey, north Belfast. The outlawed Ulster Freedom Fighters said they carried out both attacks.

Last night police were questioning four men after separate security operations. Three Protestants were detained and a gun found after their car was fired on by police when they apparently tried to evade a roadblock near Loughgall, Co Armagh.

In west Belfast, one man was arrested when explosives were found behind a house in the republican Whiterock district.

A man confined to a wheelchair after a gun attack in 1984 was yesterday jailed for nine years for helping terrorists in a murder attempt at the home of a Army sergeant.

Edward McGarrigle, 27, of Strabane, supplied two cars used in a gun attack on the part-time UDR sergeant, Belfast Crown Court was told.

McGarrigle pleaded guilty to conspiring to murder and was jailed with two other Strabane men who admitted attempted murder. They were Gerard McGarrigle (no relation), 28, who was jailed for 14 years, and Samuel McNulty, 43.