Sinn Fein Leader, Irish Premier in 1st Meeting : Ulster: Historic talks focus on IRA cease-fire. London parley between Major, Protestant militant ends in anger.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland —  Gerry Adams, the militant republican leader, had an unprecedented meeting Tuesday with Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds in Dublin to discuss the current cease-fire of the Irish Republican Army.

It was the first time a head of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the IRA, had ever met with an Irish prime minister, and the contact provoked expressions of outrage among Protestant unionists.

After the meeting, which John Hume, a Northern Irish Roman Catholic moderate, also attended, the participants said they believed the cease-fire announced last Wednesday by the IRA will continue to hold. The three also committed themselves to resolving the 25-year sectarian war in Northern Ireland by peaceful means.

Reynolds defended his meeting with Adams, at which he shook the former revolutionary’s hand, by declaring that no time should be wasted in maintaining the momentum toward peace.

Adams, insisting that the current peace is holding, asked in the meeting that the British “demilitarize” Northern Ireland by removing some or all of their 17,000 troops on duty in the province.

As the two were conferring in the Irish capital, Protestant militant Ian Paisley saw British Prime Minister John Major at No. 10 Downing St. in London--but the meeting broke up in unusually rancorous terms after only a few minutes.

Paisley, a member of the British Parliament who leads the hard-line Democratic Unionist Party, insisted on reading to Major a series of questions concerning the cease-fire--and the British position on it.

Major asked Paisley whether he believed the British government’s assertions that it had not made a secret peace deal with the IRA. When Paisley refused to answer, the prime minister dismissed him, suggesting he was not welcome at No. 10 unless he could accept Major’s word.

Paisley told reporters afterward that Major told him: “I’ll never talk to you again until you declare your belief that I speak the truth.”

Major insisted that he would abide by the language of the Downing Street Declaration, which he and Reynolds signed in December, calling for all-party talks on a settlement in Northern Ireland after a three-month cease-fire by the IRA.

The accord says that the future of Northern Ireland will be determined by a majority of voters inside the province--a majority that is currently formed by the 57% Protestant unionists, who want to remain under British rule.

Major’s treatment of Paisley is sure to unsettle the Protestant militants in Ulster, the Protestants’ favored word for Northern Ireland.

Paisley, like more moderate unionists, has been suspicious of the IRA cease-fire, believing that secret promises have been made to the Irish republican militants that could compromise the unionists’ hold on the province.

And they are leery of any contacts between Britain, the Irish government and the IRA before a three-month cease-fire period is completed.

On Tuesday, David Trimble, deputy leader of the moderate Ulster Unionist Party, said the Dublin conference was held in “indecent, obscene haste.”

The British government, worried that it does not have a firm enough commitment to a “permanent” cessation of violence by the IRA, has been cautious about contacts with Sinn Fein. Reynolds opened a gap between Dublin and London on this issue by meeting with Adams on Tuesday but defended his act, saying: “Why so soon? It is never too soon to save a life.”

When an opportunity exists, negotiators must take advantage of it, he said.

Adams, for his part, called the Dublin meeting a “historic day, the beginning of a new era.”

He said Major needed to “grasp this opportunity” for peace and not stand on ceremony or worry that the word “permanent” was not mentioned in last Wednesday’s cease-fire statement.

The IRA has observed the armistice since the cease-fire was declared, but the Protestant Ulster Volunteer Force, an outlawed paramilitary group, admitted killing one Northern Ireland Catholic man and exploding a bomb in front of the Sinn Fein press office in West Belfast.

Adams has said the IRA would not retaliate and instead hold to its promise of an indefinite cease-fire.