Ulster

The Irish Republican Army's cease-fire announced this week should improve the lives of poor people in the Catholic slums of Northern Ireland almost immediately. They will be less afraid to walk out their doors. Their youth will not be immediately suspect. Neighborhood bullies will cease pretending to be courts of law. The British military presence should progressively recede to barracks as the cease-fire sticks.The cease-fire will enable Sinn Fein, the political arm of the movement of which the IRA is the military arm, to play the political role that all constitutional parties do, its influence determined by voters.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - Northern Ireland's main Protestant party announced yesterday that it would end the Protestant-Catholic power-sharing government set up by the province's peace agreement unless the Irish Republican Army makes credible moves by January to disband and disarm. David Trimble, the party's leader and the first minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly, emerged from a showdown with his 860-member Ulster Unionist Party governing council to say that he and his party members were "fed up" with the "dilatory and limited response" that Prime Minister Tony Blair and the British government gave their "very real concerns" about the IRA and the participation in government of its political wing, Sinn Fein.

At first blush, the achievement of Britain's secretary for Northern Ireland, Peter Brooke, is not huge. Over 16 months of preliminary talks, he persuaded all but one of the significant political parties of the province to meet in a single room and talk about forming a provincial regime. No agenda is agreed upon and no predictions of success are ventured. But this will be the first such forum since 1975, and that is something.What has happened is that the Ulster Unionist Party and the Democratic Unionist Party, representing most of the Protestant majority, agreed to talks they previously shunned.

ULSTER PARK, N.Y. - Dressed in flowing robes from a fantasy of long-ago Persia, Lena Dun peers at the computer screen in her underground workshop and furiously clicks her mouse, cursing technology. Upstairs, wall sconces flicker behind her saleswomen, who sip from goblets while explaining the special-order process to customers arriving by minivan and motorcycle. This is open house at Moresca Clothing and Costume, one of the largest medieval clothing companies in the country, and Dun is preparing for the high season.

The return of the Protestant marching season finds Northern Ireland more troubled than ever.The three-track talks involving political parties that Britain and Ireland promoted last year are virtually dead. A new generation of Protestant terrorists eluding British attempts at suppression has revived the truism of two decades ago that they are meaner, deadlier, more intractable than the IRA.The IRA has had more success than ever in causing mayhem in England, particularly car-bombings in the London financial district.

THE IRA BOMB in the City of London on Friday reminded all people in Northern Ireland how welcome the cease-fire of the past 17 months has been. It brought tranquillity, created hope, showed what investment and tourism lie in store and clearly brought economic development across the border in the Irish Republic.In restarting terrorism -- so comparable to atrocities at Oklahoma City and the New York World Trade Center -- the IRA was sending a message. It was that Britain should get on with all-party talks and not add preconditions such as the destruction of illegal weapons.

HOPE that the nightmare had ended and that young people had a future has been smashed in Northern Ireland. The good will generated in 17 months of cease-fire ending in February is receding. The momentum building to a new self-government fair to all has turned to tiresome recrimination.There is instead a remote country hotel destroyed by a bomb in a car stolen from Dublin. There is the funeral of Dermot McShane, a former terrorist run over by a British army truck during disturbances in Londonderry.

Britain's Queen Elizabeth presents the George Cross to police Constable Paul Slaine in honor of the Royal Ulster Constabulary's bravery during the sectarian strife in Northern Ireland in Belfast yesterday. Pub Date: 4/13/00

If the different peoples of Ulster can reach a political accord, maybe even the quarreling peoples of Merlin can.The nerve of Russia's Duma, acting as if it was the independent sovereign parliament of a democratic country.The FBI is moving in force into Bawlmer public housing, which ought to at least make it safe for residents.Joe Camel is back, kicking butt.Pub Date: 4/13/98

Aspin fell. Snipers got him.Bill hasn't got around to picking his government, and those he does appoint don't stay very long.Ireland and England agree! Which is not the same thing as Ulster Catholics and Protestants agreeing.The city will give health benefits to unmarried homosexual partners of municipal employees. But not unmarried heterosexual partners. City Hall must draw the line somewhere.

LONDON - The moderate Protestant leader David Trimble overcame the blocking tactics of hard-line Protestant opponents yesterday and was re-elected first minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly. The election in Belfast of Trimble and of a new deputy first minister - Mark Durkan of the moderate Catholic Social Democratic and Labor Party - held out the promise of a sustained functioning life for the power-sharing government for the first time since it was created by the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement.

SINN FEIN, the political alter-ego of the "military" IRA, overtook the Social Democratic and Labor Party (SDLP) in the June 7 election to become the pre-eminent political voice of the Catholic nationalist minority of Northern Ireland. Was this a reward for coming into constitutional politics, or for intransigence against the disarmament that was promised? Post-election polls suggest that most Sinn Fein supporters want the IRA to disarm. This it has refused to do. The Good Friday agreement requires parties to use their influence to persuade affiliated paramilitaries to disarm.

AFTER WEEKS of violence punctuated by the lynching of Israeli soldiers by a Palestinian mob and Israeli military attacks against Palestinian police stations and political headquarters, there are three lessons that can be drawn from the conflict. First, there is no alternative but to internationalize the small but politically explosive hill called by Jews the Temple Mount and by Arabs the Haram al-Sharif. Second, the placement of Jewish settlements deep in Arab populated areas has been shown to be a major strategic mistake.

MILTON, N.Y. -- Usually, when hail descends on the picturesque apple orchards of the Hudson Valley, it strikes fitfully, creating havoc on a farmer's field of Empires, say, but sparing his McIntoshes. But this spring's hail was different. Two storms pelted newly formed apples with jagged balls of ice on more than 7,000 acres, and as the apples have grown, the tiny bruises have turned into ugly divots. Two thousand of those acres were so badly hurt that farmers are abandoning them entirely this season.

RESTORATION of home rule for Northern Ireland brings back the provincial government that lasted a half-century until 1971. With this difference: Instead of a government vs. opposition -- as in all other regimes in the British Isles -- the parties share executive power in rough proportion to their electoral strength. This completes the grand "devolution" that is Tony Blair's British Labor government's chief achievement. Four such regimes, analogous to American states, exist in stages from embryo to infancy.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - Divided yet determined to preserve Northern Ireland's landmark 1998 peace accord, the Ulster Unionists narrowly agreed yesterday to return to a power-sharing local government of Protestants and Roman Catholics. Within hours of the make-or-break ballot that had political careers and peace on the line, Britain announced that home rule would be restored in the province as of midnight tomorrow. David Trimble, leader of the Protestant, pro-British Ulster Unionists, will regain power as first minister in a government that includes his fiercest foes representing Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army.

The following editorial appeared in Wednesday's Los Angeles Times:No one expected the road to peace in Northern Ireland to be without risk, but last week's terrorist bombing in the busy market town of Omagh was unimaginably ruthless. And Tuesday's admission of guilt and an apology by the self-dubbed "Real IRA" cannot erase an inch of the horrible stain that the bombing leaves on Ulster's soil.Using a verifying code word, the group told a Belfast newspaper that "it was not our intention at any time to kill any civilians.

Every politician got the message from the election. Or at least some message. Not the same message. A message.The Irish government tumbled down when the prime minister misled coalition partners in appointing to a judgeship the attorney general who for seven months did not extradite a priest accused of sexual abuse of children to stand trial in Northern Ireland. That's fact, not Ulster Prod fantasy.The way the Republicans are jumping all over GATT, you'd never realize it was Ronnie's baby.

LONDON - With a peace deal at stake and his political career on the line, Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble backed yesterday his party's return to a power-sharing government in Northern Ireland. But in a play for time and votes, Trimble, Northern Ireland's leading pro-British Protestant politician, postponed from tomorrow until May 27 a pivotal ballot by the party's 860-strong ruling council to re-enter the local government. The delay forced Britain to scrap plans to restore home rule in Northern Ireland on Monday.

Britain's Queen Elizabeth presents the George Cross to police Constable Paul Slaine in honor of the Royal Ulster Constabulary's bravery during the sectarian strife in Northern Ireland in Belfast yesterday. Pub Date: 4/13/00