Irish Republic

LONDON -- For the first time since the partition of Ireland more than 70 years ago, top officials of the Irish Republic have sat down at a negotiating table with leaders of the predominantly Protestant Unionist parties of Northern Ireland.At issue in the talks, which were also attended by British officials and leaders of other parties from the North, is the political future of the troubled province."I very much hope that everyone will prove up to the magnitude of the occasion and proceed in a sensible and workmanlike way," said Sir Patrick Mayhew, Britain's minister in charge of Northern Ireland.

If newspaper headlines were the sole arbiter of what is important, then modern Ireland would be known primarily for two reasons: the "Troubles" in the North - the eternal feud between Irish nationalists and the local, pro-British Protestant majority - and the extraordinary growth over the past 10 years of its "Celtic Tiger" economy. But there is a third development, no less significant. Ireland in the 21st century is becoming multiracial and multicultural. Membership in the European Union (EU)

DUBLIN, Ireland -- From Dublin on the Irish Sea to rocky Connemara and Galway Bay in the west, from Cork in the south to Dundalk near the border with Northern Ireland, people in the Irish Republic congratulated themselves and their northern neighbors yesterday on the overwhelming vote for the Northern Ireland peace agreement in Friday's referendum."

WHILE POLITICIANS argue whether the reforms in a new Northern Ireland Police Service go far enough, applications to join it are flowing in from both Protestant-loyalist and Catholic-nationalist communities. The eagerness of well-qualified young Catholics, some from the Irish Republic, may force the hand of political leaders holding back approval. The goal of recruiting on a 50-50 basis between the two communities seems easily met. This comes when the IRA has resumed talks on "decommissioning" its weapons, or disarmament, after a year of boycotting the international commission charged with achieving that.

THE REFERENDUM in the Irish Republic on Nov. 24, to amend the constitution to provide for legal divorce and remarriage, may mark a significant step from a Catholic to a nonsectarian state. The momentum for passage comes from changes that have already occurred within Irish society.A similar attempt nine years ago backfired. But now some 75,000 marriages are believed to have broken down, a legal framework for property rights in separation has been legislated and the Catholic Church, which claims some 95 percent of the people as adherents and opposes the change, has been undermined by a few spectacular scandals involving priests.

GREAT HOPES attend the negotiations at Stormont, near Belfast, that aim to bring accommodation to the Protestant and Catholic communities in Northern Ireland, to Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, and to that republic and Britain. A business committee gets down to setting an agenda -- in itself, substance -- today.Two developments, following the second IRA ceasefire, permit optimism. One is that John Hume, leader of the Social Democratic and Labor Party (SDLP), biggest vote-winner among the Catholic minority in the province, is not running for president of the Irish Republic, for which he is eligible.

It will be the breakthrough of the decade if Mary Robinson is elected figurehead president of the Irish Republic on Wednesday, as polls predict. Senator Robinson is female, from the un-nationalistic Labor Party and a crusader against Catholic Church influence in the laws of morality.The front-runner, Brian Lenihan of the Fianna Fail Party, is in disgrace for 1982 political behavior recently revealed. The logical beneficiary from the Fine Gael Party is Austin Currie, a former civil rights leader from Northern Ireland, about which the Republic's voters are secretly tepid.

THE CAR BOMB that exploded Saturday in the rural market town of Omagh in Northern Ireland was terrorism on the scale of the Nairobi or Oklahoma City bombings.With 28 deaths and 220 wounded, this dreadful event proved more bloody than the incident known as Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972.The people in Northern Ireland, who voted for a political settlement based on shared stakes in civil society, always expected that the peace process would be challenged. Now extremists have done exactly as predicted.

WHILE POLITICIANS argue whether the reforms in a new Northern Ireland Police Service go far enough, applications to join it are flowing in from both Protestant-loyalist and Catholic-nationalist communities. The eagerness of well-qualified young Catholics, some from the Irish Republic, may force the hand of political leaders holding back approval. The goal of recruiting on a 50-50 basis between the two communities seems easily met. This comes when the IRA has resumed talks on "decommissioning" its weapons, or disarmament, after a year of boycotting the international commission charged with achieving that.

After covering the start of the present troubles of Northern Ireland in some depth years ago, I came to the conclusion that Northern Ireland would become part of the Irish Republic after:1. Drastic population change to a Catholic majority in the province.2. A strengthening of European institutions, with Ireland and Britain jointly losing sovereignty.3. Improvement of the Irish economy and welfare system to equal Britain's.4. A great secularization within the Irish Republic, the last truly Catholic country left.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- Old foes overcame old grievances yesterday as Northern Ireland's leading politicians forged a power-sharing government designed to end a generation of bloodletting.The nomination of 10 candidates to Cabinet posts marked another important milestone in the step-by-step process designed to bring a lasting peace to the British province.For the first time since 1974, Northern Ireland is poised to gain political powers from the British Parliament in London and will rule itself through a 108-member local Assembly composed of majority Protestants and minority Roman Catholics -- groups that have been at war for generations.

THE CAR BOMB that exploded Saturday in the rural market town of Omagh in Northern Ireland was terrorism on the scale of the Nairobi or Oklahoma City bombings.With 28 deaths and 220 wounded, this dreadful event proved more bloody than the incident known as Bloody Sunday in Londonderry in 1972.The people in Northern Ireland, who voted for a political settlement based on shared stakes in civil society, always expected that the peace process would be challenged. Now extremists have done exactly as predicted.

THE TWIN referendums in Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic, with a combined favorable vote of 85 percent, promise a new beginning in Northern Ireland. Its place in the United Kingdom is conceded, both nationalisms are legitimized and new forms of cooperation will be established across the communal divide, across the Border and across the Irish Sea.The 71 percent majority in Northern Ireland for the Good Friday agreement was a closer thing than that figure suggests. With almost all Catholics in favor, the Protestant or unionist community voted about 55 to 45 in favor.

DUBLIN, Ireland -- From Dublin on the Irish Sea to rocky Connemara and Galway Bay in the west, from Cork in the south to Dundalk near the border with Northern Ireland, people in the Irish Republic congratulated themselves and their northern neighbors yesterday on the overwhelming vote for the Northern Ireland peace agreement in Friday's referendum."

DUBLIN, Ireland -- At first glance, the agreement aimed at ending three decades of street warfare and other violence in Northern Ireland seems like a political winner here in the Republic of Ireland. In contrast to the North, where it is the subject of relentless and often vitriolic debate, in Ireland the accord has the support of every major political party.Who, after all, could object to peace?But while the agreement represents a momentous step in resolving one of this century's most persistent conflicts, government and other political figures in Ireland say they face a surprisingly daunting challenge in persuading the more than 2 million eligible voters to turn out on May 22, when it will be put to referendums here and in Northern Ireland.

THE NEXT OBSTACLE in the tortuous road to peace in Northern Ireland is twin referendums May 22. Simple majorities for the settlement in the province and in the Irish Republic are probable. That's not good enough.The key to making the settlement succeed would be a decisive majority in its favor among Protestant voters in Northern Ireland. Such an outcome is not assured. Protestants are a small majority of the people in Northern Ireland but a substantial majority of voters who turn out and who will elect the majorities to the new Northern Ireland Assembly for years.

DUBLIN, Ireland -- It is said the Irish speak well of the dead. But as word spread that the Rev. Brendan Smyth had died, it was hard to find voices of sympathy for the priest who was Ireland's most notorious pedophile.In 1994, Smyth's crimes, and the responses to them by the Irish government and the Roman Catholic Church, toppled the government and seriously weakened the position of the church in Europe's most Catholic country.Smyth, 70, collapsed from an apparent heart attack and died Friday night in the exercise yard of the Curragh Prison, west of Dublin, where he had been sent to serve 12 years.

Both parts of Ireland have changed profoundly since the last )) serious attempt by Britain to revive provincial self-government in Northern Ireland collapsed two decades ago. That is the reason for measured optimism about the "Framework for Agreement" negotiated by the British and Irish governments over the past 14 months.Ireland may be ready.The Ulster Unionists, the long-dominant party of the Protestant majority in the North, reacted with customary knee-jerk negativism. Yet without their engagement this plan cannot fly. When their constituents have digested the plan, Unionists may find they would rather help shape these institutions than shoot down the effort.

THE AGREEMENT to re-establish an assembly of Northern Ireland, to cooperate across the border and to bring Ireland and Britain closer offers people stuck in historic quarrels a chance to go forward. It is not a united but an agreed Ireland.The success of negotiations, after a quarter century of failed initiatives, reflects credit on many participants. Foremost is John Hume, the political leader of the nationalist minority of Northern Ireland for a generation, whose ideas planted with others charted all progress made since the 1980s.

THE PRESIDENT-ELECT of the Irish Republic was born and raised in Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom and lived there the past decade. Her election is evidence that the people of the republic are more ready than ever for inclusion. But it does not bring political unity of the island closer and, indeed, can be taken as provocative by the majority in Northern Ireland, who consider themselves British.That is because clauses of the Irish Republic's constitution that made Mary McAleese eligible to be president -- while ineligible to vote -- claim jurisdiction over them, too. These clauses must be changed in referendum as part of any settlement for Northern Ireland, or there will be no settlement.