How bitter enemies finally set hatred aside for peace

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — One is a hellfire-and-damnation Protestant pastor who looks at the Roman Catholic papacy as "the seed of the serpent" and "the progeny of hell." The other is a Catholic former deputy commander of the Irish Republican Army who once served time for possessing 250 pounds of explosives and 5,000 rounds of ammunition.

The two men have never been alone in a room together. They barely have exchanged a word, let alone a handshake. But if all goes as planned, the Rev. Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness will become partners in one of the oddest governments Europe has known, in a land where the idea of Protestants and Catholics sharing power is the oddest idea of all.

Peace is slowly coming to Northern Ireland, or what passes for peace in a region stunned by a decades-long civil conflict between Catholics who sought union with Ireland and Protestants who declared allegiance to Britain, a war that claimed 3,700 lives.

Within the next two months, the glowering, iron-willed Paisley could be nominated as first minister of a new, jointly administered Northern Ireland government. Serving at his side, as deputy first minister, would be McGuinness, who for years was part of the IRA's guerrilla leadership.

"When this happens, and I believe now that it will happen, it will probably be the biggest political development since the 1916 Rising or the partition of Ireland in the early 1920s," McGuinness said in a recent interview. "I think many people will have to pinch themselves to believe that it's true."

The extent of the gulf both men have had to cross, and still must walk, was apparent Sunday, as Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party had signaled it was not ready to meet Monday's deadline for joining McGuinness' Sinn Fein in government.

British officials have made clear that the alternative is to see Northern Ireland's interim parliament at Stormont shut down immediately and the province ruled directly from London, with strong input from Dublin.

In the end, DUP leaders agreed to commit to entering a government by May, leading to the first-ever meeting Monday between Paisley and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams over the timetable for forming a government.

Adams, thought to have once been an IRA commander, is a longtime agitator for unification with Ireland.

Why now?

A number of factors lie behind Monday's agreement.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair is determined to end the Northern Ireland conflict before he steps down this summer. To that end, his government has pledged $70 billion in aid to the new government over the next four years.

Britain has dangled both economic rewards and disincentives in front of the parties. British treasury chief Gordon Brown offered an extra $1.97 billion if a deal was struck; a failure to meet Monday's deadline would, however, have resulted in a punitive water-tax bill.

But there are other reasons: the Sept. 11 attacks, which ended any romance of "freedom fighters" in the U.S. and much of the IRA's American support; the IRA's subsequent historic decision to disband and join the political process; the rise of a Catholic middle class in Northern Ireland; and the embrace of Europe, which has rendered internal boundaries across the continent far less distinct.

Crucial to it all has been the spiritual journey of Paisley, 80, a force in Ulster so huge and so immovable that no peace is possible without his blessing.

"We must not allow our justified loathing of the horrors and tragedies of the past to become a barrier to creating a better and more stable future for our children," Paisley said Monday.

"Paisley was the Rubicon, the river all sides had to cross, or at least meet in the middle halfway," said Peter Shirlow, a lecturer at the University of Ulster and a longtime follower of the peace process.

Paisley's refusal to consort with "the enemy" most often has been directed at the Vatican.

"The dog will return to its vomit. The washed sow will return to its wallowing in the mire, but by God's grace we will never return to Popery," he wrote in 1982.

But it has also been directed at the men whose offices, if all goes well, soon will be down the hall from his own at Stormont.

McGuinness, 56, remembers serving in a joint delegation from Northern Ireland that traveled to South Africa in 1997 to learn about post-conflict reconciliation.

Paisley and the other unionists, he said, refused to fly on the same plane.

"When we arrived at the compound, we were told that the unionists weren't prepared to sleep in the same sleeping quarters, weren't prepared to eat in the same restaurant, and weren't prepared to drink in the same pub," he said. "We experienced the ludicrous sight of Nelson Mandela coming to address the delegation, and being told that they weren't prepared to sit in the same room with us."

McGuinness added: "We have now reached the point where we are on the verge of seeing the same individuals and personalities who made up those delegations in 1997, hopefully coming together to form a coalition government."

The DUP's announcement over the weekend that it is ready to enter a government with Sinn Fein in May raises questions for many in Belfast, on both sides of the divide. Why now? And if now, why not before?

"Paisley's motivations raise a very mysterious question. But it also applies to Adams. Both of them have settled for compromises that were available in the 1970s and '80s. Both of them have now departed from the essential political platform that they were both always associated with. And when you ask them why, in both cases, the answer is the same: The people have now changed and will permit me to do this," said Paul Bew, professor of Irish politics at Queens University.

"What this deal shows is that both sides realize, at a very simple level, that they can't have it all their own way."

In the working-class Catholic neighborhoods along Falls Road, where murals of republican hunger striker Bobby Sands and various IRA heroes still tower above the sidewalks, there is resentment not only at Paisley for blocking a deal for so long but at Catholic leaders who also took years to come to the table.

"So tell me this: What was all the bombing and killing about?" said Liam, a young Catholic man who declined to give his last name.

"Let's face it. They didn't win. Everybody knows if England pulled out tomorrow, this place would be a shambles," he said. "Was it all for money? They say property's booming, we'll all get a lot of jobs. Well, we could have had all that 20 years ago. So what was the killing about?"

The sectarian enemies tend to see eye to eye on economic matters. Strikingly, one of the things that unionist leader Ian Paisley and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams quickly agreed on Monday was the need to go back to Brown and seek a bigger financial package.

"Northern Ireland is massively dependent on the exchequer [British Treasury] compared to the rest of the United Kingdom," said Henry Patterson, an expert in Northern Ireland's political process at the University of Ulster in Belfast. "This has to change and that is the main challenge facing all the parties."

The obvious place to start looking is south of the border. The Irish government is contributing $400 million to help develop infrastructure around the border regions. A divided highway to Donegal in the northwest is to pass through Northern Ireland, offering economic spinoff opportunities prospects. A $7 million funding package has been advanced to expand Derry airport in Northern Ireland.

"Cross-border cooperation is crucial to the development of the northwest," says Niall Blaney, a member of the Irish parliament. "The investment in Derry City Airport, an electricity interconnection and a proposed single electricity market are just some of the ways we are trying to work together in the interests of everyone on this island."

It's the economy

But one of the biggest impediments to inward investment in Northern Ireland is the high rate of corporate tax — 28 percent, which is uncompetitive compared with the 12.5 percent rate in Ireland. Brown is investigating the possibility of aligning the tax rates in Northern Ireland with those of the Republic.

"That won't happen," says Basil McCrea, a member of the Belfast Assembly, who claims that any taxation change would lead to demands from Scotland or Wales for similar preferential treatment.

He adds that the incoming government will face critical economic questions, such as a ballooning 18- to 24-year-old population and the need for 180,000 new jobs in the next 10 years, at a time when manual employment is falling.

"We need to get the entrepreneurs generating jobs and wealth," says McCrea. "That's the key, and it comes from people rather than governments."

Additional information from Reuters and The Christian Science Monitor