Paisley Is the Focus of N. Irish Eyes

In the interview, Paisley was generally soft-spoken and cheerful, more mellow than his public image, wearing a "Jesus is Lord" lapel pin on his dark blue suit. He laughed about being paged in an airport a few months ago to take a phone call from President Bush, and he chuckled about rumors that Queen Elizabeth II does a wicked impersonation of his distinctive Northern Irish accent.

He said that when he looked back on his long public life, he had no regrets. He disagrees with critics who say he polarized Northern Ireland, marginalized moderate Protestant leaders, fueled bigotry and incited violence. He also served up his characteristic vitriol toward Sinn Fein and the IRA.

"The IRA has held onto their guns," he said. "They've held onto their crime. They've held onto their blood money. Until they make the move, there will be no move made by the Protestants.

"Are we going to tolerate terrorists in the future government of Northern Ireland? My position is absolutely crystal clear: We have said no."

Despite consistently positive assessments of the IRA's disarmament by independent monitors, Paisley insisted that the IRA had made only a "partial withdrawal from criminal acts." The latest report, issued April 26, said the IRA leadership was committed to following a political and peaceful path and was not sanctioning criminal activities. It added, however, that the group faced a "challenging task in ensuring full compliance" by all its members. It also warned that paramilitary groups on both sides were continuing to recruit members and trying to acquire weapons.

Paisley said the IRA's progress toward disarmament had come as a result of pressure from him and other Protestants. "If we break now, if we say, 'All right, we will sit down with you now,' then the cause is lost," he said.

Alex Maskey, a member of Sinn Fein's executive committee and a former mayor of Belfast, said his party was ready to govern with Paisley. Although "not enamored with the idea," he said, the party was willing to try, despite what he called Paisley's "extremely poisonous" impact on Northern Ireland politics. "We want power-sharing reestablished pronto. There's no government here in the North."

In Ballymena, some of Paisley's supporters, including David Brown, a retired auto engineer, said they hoped Paisley would continue to boycott the assembly. Brown said he was a "loyalist" who wanted Northern Ireland to remain part of Britain and was opposed to Sinn Fein, which aims to reunite Northern Ireland with the Republic of Ireland. "I don't agree with Sinn Fein, and that means don't talk to them," he said.

But many more Protestants interviewed in Paisley's home district said they believed he should choose pragmatic politics over hard-core ideology. "He'll dig his heels in for a while, but he'll have to agree. It's just a matter of time," said Ryan McCaig, 34, a Paisley backer with heavily tattooed arms.

Alan Steed, 53, a Protestant who served in the British army, said now that people have had a taste of peace and are enjoying the boom in construction and tourism it has brought to Northern Ireland, they cannot return to the days of army checkpoints and bombings. "Peace is fantastic," he said. "I can drive anywhere now. Running around and killing people doesn't work. Those days are over. It's much better to argue in the assembly."

In the interview in London, Paisley said he had made mistakes but that he didn't regret his famous "anti-Christ" comment. He insisted that he was not anti-Catholic but opposed to "the Catholic Church's doctrines."

He said he spoke for working-class people who counted on him to do what he promised. People didn't need a "dictionary to understand" his words, he said, because he gave it to them "plain and straight."

Asked if that was because his career had been built on using simple, negative phrases and words such as "not an inch" and "never," he responded: "Our Lord said 'no' -- he said no to evil. You can't condemn a man because he says no to evil. We have said no, and we have no apologies. We have also said yes to very many things."