Northern Ireland

MARTIN MEEHAN, 62 IRA commander Martin Meehan, a one-time Irish Republican Army commander who spurred IRA members toward compromise, died of a heart attack Saturday at his Belfast home, the Sinn Fein party said. Mr. Meehan spent 18 years in prison for a wide range of offenses, but ended his days as a firm advocate of peace and compromise in Northern Ireland. He was among the first IRA members arrested in August 1969, the month Britain deployed its army as would-be peacekeepers amid Protestant-Catholic rioting.

In James Michener's novel Poland, a leftist resistance fighter is infuriated when another commando expresses misgivings about Soviet aid against the German occupation. "Do you reject the great victories the Russians are giving us?" he barks. "I shall accept the soldiers marching in," says the second fighter, "but I want them to march out again." British troops marched into Northern Ireland 38 years ago as peacekeepers. Radical elements in the province undoubtedly would see more than a passing similarity between Polish life under Soviet hegemony and life in Northern Ireland under London's rule, but others would call it differently.

Tuesday marked the historic restoration of power-sharing between Catholics and Protestants, Irish republicans and British loyalists in Northern Ireland - and the beginning of a new set of difficult challenges, including how to remember the bloody past. "It is recognized that victims have a right to remember," stated the 1998 Belfast Agreement, which provided the framework for the restoration of local government. It's a little shocking to read this principle enshrined in the cold print of an official document.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- A militant Free Presbyterian preacher and a former leader of the Irish Republican Army were sworn in as the joint heads of a new government in Northern Ireland yesterday in a move to conclude more than 30 years of conflict between Protestants loyal to Britain and Catholics who fought for a united Ireland. The two still-suspicious new government leaders did not single out each other in the giddy handshakes shared among the new Northern Irish officials. But as the Rev. Ian Paisley of the Democratic Unionist Party and Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein took their oaths, both sides hailed the day as the final end of the Troubles that took more than 3,500 lives between 1969 and 2001.

GREENBELT -- Even in a breakaway ex-colony, the queen of England drew thousands to the barricades to gawk and cheer and wave the Union Jack. She stopped traffic with her long black motorcade and moved inside a bubble of efficient black-suited security men. But not even the queen could alter the laws of orbital mechanics.

In the aftermath of "the Troubles" that ripped through Catholic and Protestant neighborhoods and spawned legions of paramilitary death squads between 1969 and 1994, Northern Ireland's artists began trying to make sense of the tragedy that had overtaken their homeland. Those efforts are on display in an intriguing exhibition at American University in Washington. Resolutions: New Art From Northern Ireland presents about 50 works by 21 artists who have attempted to express their experience of conflict and war in visual terms.

Blast midfielder Jonathan Steele, the youngest member of the team at 20, has been suspended for the rest of the season, including the playoffs, president-general manager Kevin Healey announced yesterday. Steele became argumentative during halftime of Saturday night's loss in Philadelphia and lashed out at his teammates and coach Danny Kelly. He was suspended earlier this season for two games, also for behavioral reasons. "It was an unfortunate situation," Healey said. "We like Jonny as a player and person, but he cut across the line and we made a stand that we weren't going to stand for that after he had been warned about it."

LONDON -- With a midnight deadline looming, the British government and Ian Paisley's hard-line Protestant party seemed to be inching toward a face-saving compromise to rescue Northern Ireland's peace process. Midnight tonight is the moment of truth. British Prime Minister Tony Blair's government has warned the major parties representing Northern Ireland's Protestants and Roman Catholics that they must agree to sit together in a power-sharing government by then or Britain will bring down the curtain on self-rule for the troubled province.

LONDON -- The Irish Republican Army has disbanded its units that bought and built weapons, stopped training recruits and ceased intelligence gathering, committing itself to a path of peace, said a periodic report made public yesterday by a panel monitoring peace efforts in Northern Ireland. The militants have, in effect, closed down their paramilitary and criminal activities, said Lord John Alderdice, a member of the Independent Monitoring Commission who presented the report to the news media in Belfast.

LONDON - After hundreds of hard-line Protestants armed with gasoline bombs, homemade grenades and automatic weapons waged battle against police and British soldiers, Belfast seemed devoid yesterday of the peace that supposedly arrived in Northern Ireland two months ago. Carcasses of scores of charred vehicles were on Belfast streets while blackened shells of burned-out buildings still smoldered from the violence that began Saturday after a parade by...