Paisley Now in a Position to Shake Up Ulster Politics
Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader Ian Paisley talks to the media at DUP headquarters in Belfast during elections to the Northern Ireland power sharing assembly, November 28, 2003. Paisley's party won the most seats in elections for Northern Ireland's
BELFAST, Northern Ireland, Dec. 6 — The Rev. Ian Paisley, whose hard-line Democratic Unionist Party was catapulted to electoral victory here by disillusioned Protestants late last month, is not one to muffle his animosity.
Mr. Paisley is a 77-year-old firebrand who once interrupted Pope John Paul II during a speech to roar: "Anti-Christ! I renounce you and your cults and creeds!" He described Margaret Thatcher as a "Jezebel" for supporting the British-Irish agreement of 1985; Bill Clinton as a president with "blood-soaked hands"; and David Trimble, the Protestant politician who was an architect of the 1998 power-sharing agreement that ended sectarian violence here, as "treacherous."
"Unless we destroy the agreement, we will be destroyed forever," Mr. Paisley said at a rally in April.
Dr. Ian R. K. Paisley | 3/18/2009
