United Ireland

LONDON -- The irony is that if it weren't for the Irish Republican Army, Ireland would be effectively united by now.Early indications are that the IRA broke the cease-fire because it was on the brink of splitting internally. The ''hard men'' who were talked into declaring a unilateral cease-fire in late 1994 had lost faith in their colleagues' promises that this tactic would finally bring the organization recognition as an equal negotiating partner in Irish affairs.Facing a choice between internal division and renewed war, the IRA followed its instincts and went back to bombs.

WASHINGTON -- Last May, during a thunderstorm so violent it seemed biblical, the adversaries in Northern Ireland's civil war stood under a tent on the South Lawn of the White House and put aside ancient hatreds.The Irish visitors were attending a presidential conference on trade and investment in Northern Ireland, an effort that would have been unthinkable a year earlier.President Clinton, the man of the hour, joined the party to choruses of "Hurrah! Hurrah!"A cease-fire in the 25-year-old civil war opened new possibilities to the people of Northern Ireland, and Irish leaders on all sides credit Mr. Clinton for playing a crucial role in bringing it about.

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.

Belfast, Northern Ireland -- A Protestant businessman cautions against over-optimism about the prospects for peace in Northern Ireland:''How would you feel about peace and reconciliation with people who have killed your wife and children and destroyed your business with bombs planted in the center of cities? Would you be willing to kiss and make up so quickly?''The question introduces a note of realistic caution into what could be an impractical peace fast track.A record Christmas sales season (the second-largest sales volume in the United Kingdom)

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- The Rev. Ian R. K. Paisley rises in his pulpit like Captain Ahab in the bow of a whaling boat, a harsh, obsessive, blackclad figure wielding his Bible like a harpoon.His Moby Dick is unification of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland. The Irish Republican Army is for him the incarnation of evil, the pope in Rome the Antichrist.He sees treachery, betrayal and surrender everywhere. He is the implacable foe of compromise to whom great majorities of Protestant, pro-British Ulstermen have turned in past times of crisis.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- While the warring militants of the Irish Republican Army and the Combined Loyalist Military Command cautiously ponder the Anglo-Irish peace program, John Hume, the nonviolent leader who started the process, talks as if the men of violence are becoming irrelevant.Mr. Hume, the leader of the Social Democratic and Labor Party (SDLP), said Saturday he believed a process had begun that would bring peace no matter what the militants decide."I believe there is a real mass desire among all sections of our people to finish the violence and to have peace and reach agreement," he said.

DUBLIN, Ireland -- The Irish government will be "flexible and imaginative" when it meets pro-British unionists from Northern Ireland for the first time ever in multiparty peace talks, officials here said yesterday.The Irish government will be called to the negotiating table as soon as the political parties of Northern Ireland have reached broad agreement on internal provincial political reforms.The second phase of the negotiations, expected to start early next month, will focus on the relationship between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

BELFAST, Northern Ireland -- For the first time in 17 years, leaders of Ulster's feuding unionist and republican traditions will open talks today on a new political future for the strife-torn province.Over the next 10 weeks, they will try to end the sectarian violence that has left 3,000 dead over the past two decades of "The Troubles."Their difficult quest: to find a formula for the peaceful, local government of Northern Ireland.The province has been controlled by the British Parliament since the provincial legislature at Stormount was abolished in 1972 in the face of unionist (Protestant)