Monday March 9, 04:53 PM
Business but not as usual after N.Ireland attack
By Carmel Crimmins
LISBURN, Northern Ireland, March 9 (Reuters) - John Stevenson will be delivering chicken chow mein as normal around the streets of Lisburn this week, but he will be doing so with a sense of unease.
The Republicans who shot a group of British soldiers and pizza delivery men outside a barracks in Northern Ireland on Saturday have warned people such as Stevenson, who regularly drops off Chinese take-aways at the Thiepval Barracks in Lisburn, that they are 'collaborators' because they provide services to the army.
The gunmen killed two soldiers and seriously wounded four other men, including two Domino's Pizza workers. Inevitably, there are fears that pro-British paramilitaries will retaliate, sending Northern Ireland spiralling back into the tit-for-tat sectarian violence it hoped it had left behind.
'I dread to think what is going to happen over this year,' Stevenson told Reuters from a taxi cab office, where he works as a radio operator during the day before switching to takeaway deliveries at night.
'If I get a job going up to the camp I would be a bit worried, but it wouldn't stop me from doing it,' said the father of three, who has been receiving text messages calling for the Protestant community to take up arms.
IRON BAR
The 47-year old rejects violence, but does keep an iron bar in the front of his car for security.
'It's not going to be much help if someone comes along with a gun but it's like a comforter for me.'
Lisburn, a bustling city of over 110,000 people around 9 miles south of Belfast, hosts the headquarters of the British Army in Northern Ireland and gets valuable business from the troops.
Shops in the city centre brushed off any threat from the Real IRA, the Republican group that claimed responsibility for the attack. The group rejects the peace settlement that has allowed Catholic Irish Republicans and pro-British Protestants to sit together in Northern Ireland's assembly and government.
'I get plenty of soldiers and their wives coming in,' said one shopkeeper who declined to be named. 'But I don't think they'll want to come out and do much shopping now.'
'My main concern is that the whole bloody thing will start up again, not that someone will accuse me of being a collaborator.'
Politicians from Northern Ireland's Protestant and Catholic communities have said that Saturday's shooting, the deadliest attack in a decade, will not reverse progress made since the 1998 Good Friday peace deal ended decades of sectarian strife.
UNWELCOME HEADLINES
But the ambush outside the Massareene base, about 15 miles from Belfast, has put the province back on the world's front pages at a time when its leaders were trying to cultivate foreign investment and tourism for its small economy.
'Our name was synonymous with violence. We have had a huge struggle to overcome that,' said Reg Empey, Northern Ireland's Minister for Employment.
'There is no question but that it is a negative development from an economic point of view.'
Northern Ireland First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness were forced to delay an investment mission to the United States until later this week.
Their trip, which included a visit to the White House, will now probably be spent explaining the security situation to alarmed investors.
Northern Ireland's unemployment rate of around 4.3 percent is below the British average of around 6 percent, and economists from the consultancy PricewaterhouseCoopers recently said it would escape the worst of the British recession.
PwC economists forecast that Northern Ireland's economy would contract by over 1 percent in 2009 compared with 1.8 percent in Britain generally, as weak sterling draws thousands of shoppers from the Republic of Ireland, and makes investment more attractive.
Last month, Teleperformance (Paris: FR0000051807 - news) , a global call centre operator, said it was creating 610 extra jobs in Northern Ireland.
'My kids are only starting to see the benefits of peace,' said Stevenson. 'Let's just hope things don't get any worse'.
(Editing by Kevin Liffey) Keywords: IRISH/BUSINESS
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