14 BELFAST DRUG SUSPECTS ARRAIGNED

BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) - Fourteen suspected drug dealers were
arraigned Friday following a series of police raids aimed at stopping
heroin sales in Northern Ireland.

All 14 people faced charges of supplying heroin or cocaine, often to
undercover detectives, during a police surveillance operation that began in
October.

All were arrested in early morning raids on their homes Thursday in one of
the biggest operations ever mounted by the police drug squad.

One Belfast couple, Paul Quinn and Kerry Nixon, charged with possessing and
supplying heroin, were released on bail on the condition they live with
their parents and stay out of south Belfast, the center of the city's
nightlife.

The 12 others were refused bail.

Until the 1990s, Northern Ireland's drug market mostly dealt in marijuana
and Ecstasy. But that changed with the peace process in the mid-1990s, when
the province's rival paramilitary groups declared cease-fires - and
developed more sophisticated drug-trafficking rackets.

The largest Protestant paramilitary group, the Ulster Defense Association,
is considered the most heavily involved in selling drugs. Hard-line UDA
neighborhoods in Belfast and Ballymena, a town northwest of the capital
where most of Thursday's raids occurred, were the first places where
hardcore drugs like heroin and cocaine were sold.

But the cease-fires have also made it easier for full-time dealers to
operate with less risk of being killed by paramilitaries. This is
particularly the case in hard-line Catholic areas where support for the
Irish Republican Army runs high. The IRA has been blamed for killing more
than a dozen drug dealers since 1995, including one slaying last month.