Northern Ireland enemies reach historic agreement

BELFAST, Northern Ireland — The leaders of Northern Ireland's major Protestant and Catholic parties, sitting side by side for the first time in history, announced a stunning deal Monday to forge a coalition of archenemies within six weeks.

The meeting marked what many here hope will be the end of the strife that has claimed 3,700 lives over three decades.

"I believe the agreement ... marks the beginning of a new era of politics on this island," said Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, who has spent much of his political life battling to end British rule in the province and to unite with Ireland.

"We all saw something today that people never, ever thought would happen," said Peter Hain, the British government's Northern Ireland secretary. Hain, who compared the accord to the end of apartheid in his native South Africa, expects to hand power May 8 to a coalition led by the polar opposites of provincial politics.

The Rev. Ian Paisley, 80, a Protestant evangelist who would become the province's first minister after decades of thwarting compromise with Roman Catholics, sat at a table beside Adams, 58, a reputed Irish Republican Army veteran whom Paisley long denounced as a "man of blood." Throughout the tortuous 14-year course of Northern Ireland's peace process, Paisley had never before agreed to negotiate directly with Adams.

The agreement, after barely an hour of discussions in the lawmakers' dining hall in Stormont Parliamentary Building in Belfast, called for Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionists to work directly together on a detailed program for government.

Britain, in turn, promised to pass emergency legislation today that would extend its deadline for a working power-sharing government from Monday to May 8. On that date, the Northern Ireland Assembly would elect a 12-member administration with Paisley at its head and Martin McGuinness, Adams' top aide, as deputy first minister, the No. 2 post in the new joint administration.

"Everything we have done over the last 10 years has been a preparation for this moment," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said, calling the meeting in Belfast, the provincial capital, "a remarkable coming together of people who have, for very obvious reasons, been strongly opposed in the past."

There was no handshake for the cameras, but there were smiles and mutual pledges to work toward a better future for what Paisley calls "this part of the United Kingdom" and what Adams referred to, pointedly, as "this island."

The distinction remains the crux of their dispute, and it will not be easily resolved. Paisley and his Protestant supporters believe the six counties of Ulster, as the province is known, should remain forever a part of Britain. Adams represents the view of the Roman Catholic minority that Northern Ireland's destiny is unification with the Republic of Ireland.

But for now they have agreed to set aside the question in the interest of returning day-to-day governance of Northern Ireland to its elected officials.

A clear majority of Northern Ireland's Protestants and Catholics long ago embraced the peace plan outlined in the 1998 Good Friday agreement. But it took nine years to persuade the hard-line politicians on either side of the sectarian divide to actually work together to implement the agreement.

The stage was set two weeks ago when elections for a new assembly resulted in clear-cut victories for both Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party and Sinn Fein. The vote was widely interpreted as a mandate for Paisley and Adams to reach an accommodation with each other.

The British government gave the parties two weeks to form a government. The deadline was midnight Monday, and Hain insisted it was written in stone. If no agreement was reached, Hain vowed to shut down the Northern Ireland assembly, stop paying the salaries of its elected politicians and reinstate direct rule from London with an enhanced role for Dublin in the province's affairs.

Northern Ireland also would miss out on a $70 billion aid package from London.

Tense negotiations continued over the weekend. In a deal-saving compromise for all sides, Hain agreed to fudge the deadline if Paisley and Adams would at least meet on Monday and agree to a firm date when power-sharing would begin.

Power-sharing was the central goal of the U.S.-brokered Good Friday deal. The last, moderate-led coalition collapsed in October 2002 amid chronic arguments between Protestants and Sinn Fein over the future of the IRA, which at the time was refusing to disarm and accused of gathering intelligence for a potential resumption of violence.

The joint government, if commissioned, not only would put Sinn Fein in the Cabinet but would offer a broad spectrum of cooperation with the Republic of Ireland, with which Sinn Fein leaders hope eventually to unite.

Still, analysts here cautioned that creating a new assembly would not erase sectarian divisions dating back centuries. Ancient rivalries are still on display daily in the province, where "nationalist" or "republican" Catholics favor unification with the Republic of Ireland and "unionist" or "loyalist" Protestants remain fiercely loyal to the British crown.

"It's like the emperor's new clothes — people are pretending to see something that isn't there," said Pete Shirlow, a senior lecturer at Queen's University in Belfast who specializes in conflict resolution. Shirlow said that despite the prosperity brought by peace, Northern Ireland remains deeply segregated.

He said 70 percent of the population still lives in communities that are almost exclusively Protestant or Catholic, and 90 percent of children study in schools dominated by one denomination. Nearly two-thirds of people between 14 and 24 have never had a substantial conversation with someone of the other faith, he added, and mixed marriages remain extremely uncommon.

"We are living together in isolation, purposefully apart," Shirlow said. He noted that Paisley and Adams have agreed to govern together but their parties have rarely discussed serious efforts to integrate neighborhoods and schools.

Compiled from Los Angels Times, Associated Press, Washington Post and Chicago Tribune reports