BELFAST, Northern Ireland — Nobel Peace Prize laureate David Trimble and other moderates went down to defeat Friday while hard-line parties on both sides of the Protestant and Catholic divide claimed victory in Northern Ireland's hotly fought elections to the British Parliament.
In mainly Protestant areas, the Rev. Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists, riding a wave of anger over the collapsed 1998 Good Friday agreement and alleged criminality by the nationalist Irish Republican Army, trounced three Ulster Unionist members of Parliament, including party leader Trimble.
In the Catholic community, Irish nationalist Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams increased his share of the vote despite his party's ties to the IRA, whose members have been blamed in recent months for a bank robbery and the slaying of a Belfast Catholic man.
Sinn Fein's other three members of Parliament easily won reelection, and the party grabbed an additional seat from Ulster Unionists.
The province has 18 seats in Parliament. In addition to the Sinn Fein victories, Democratic Unionists won nine seats; Ulster Unionists one spot; and the Social Democratic and Labor Party, a Catholic moderate group, three positions.
The counting for Thursday's election began Friday in Northern Ireland, and the results were announced late in the day.
Although the IRA-linked scandals did not stop Irish nationalists from supporting Sinn Fein, British unionist anger at the IRA cost the moderate Ulster Unionists, who previously held five seats. Democratic Unionists, who oppose the landmark Good Friday power-sharing agreement between minority Catholics and majority Protestants, labeled Ulster Unionists as soft on Sinn Fein and the IRA.
"Northern Ireland politics will never be the same after today," said Paisley, the firebrand Democratic Unionist leader and fierce advocate of Northern Ireland's union with Britain, which the mainly Catholic nationalists reject. "The whole picture has changed. I thank God that the people of Ulster are standing up today" against Sinn Fein and the IRA.
Adams said in his acceptance speech that the results had vindicated his party after months of intense criticism in the media. Democratic Unionists vowed in their campaign not to share power with a party they said was linked to terrorists. Adams, however, told BBC Radio that Sinn Fein had won a mandate and that Paisley's party would have to negotiate with it.
