Tit for Tat

Sinn Fein's leader is shot

When gunfire ripped through downtown Belfast last week, office workers on their lunch break responded with weary resignation, learned from years of living dangerously. For twelve days Irish Republican Army terrorists had gone on a shooting spree, gunning down five people. By the grim rules of Northern Ireland's religious warfare, it was time for militant Protestants to strike back. Still, when the counterattack came, it proved to be more than the usual random raid against Roman Catholics. This time the Protestants' target was Gerry Adams, 35, president of Sinn Fein, the I.R.A.'s political arm, and the leading voice in support of the terrorist organization.

Adams also happens to hold a seat, which he has refused to occupy, in the British Parliament. He had left the Catholic stronghold of West Belfast to appear in court on a charge of disorderly conduct, stemming from the parliamentary election campaign. The Sinn Fein leader and four followers were driving through the city center when three men in a light brown Rover pulled up alongside and opened fire with automatic weapons. Three bullets struck Adams in the left arm and upper back. Three other people in the car were wounded, including the driver, who still managed to speed Adams to the hospital. At week's end the Sinn Fein leader appeared to be out of danger. Police arrested three of his alleged attackers barely 300 yards from the scene of the crime. The Ulster Freedom Fighters, an extremist Protestant paramilitary group, later claimed responsibility for the attack.

The new I.R. A. shooting binge and the Protestant counterattack all but overshadowed a guardedly optimistic report, released last week by Ulster's chief constable, showing that terrorist incidents in 1983 had dropped to the lowest point since 1970. Events in Ulster also threatened to set back the efforts of Irish Prime Minister Garret Fitz-Gerald to gain support for a power-sharing scheme that would give Britain and Ireland joint responsibility for the troubled region. On a state visit to Washington last week, the Irish leader urged Americans not to make "common cause for any purpose, however speciously well meaning, with people who advocate or condone the use of violence in Ireland for political ends." One of those people, Dominic "Mad Dog" McGlinchey, 29, Ireland's most wanted terrorist, was captured after a shootout with police near Shannon Airport on St. Patrick's Day.