Word: belfasts
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Some seasons, just being Irish seems curse enough, and never more so than in Northern Ireland's annual marching season, when Protestant pride expresses itself in drum-banging celebration of Catholic defeat. Down the streets of Belfast, through such villages as Drumcree, the brethren of the Orange Order must go each July, drums pounding, flutes trilling out martial tunes, banners fluttering portraits of William of Orange triumphing over the Catholics at the Battle of the Boyne 308 years...
...BELFAST: Martyrs are legion on both sides of Northern Ireland's age-old conflict, but the three Catholic children buried Tuesday may prove to be martyrs for a greater cause -- peaceful coexistence. "The Drumcree standoff and the murder of the children have isolated the hard-liners within the Unionist community," says TIME London bureau chief Barry Hillenbrand. "A lot of people within the Orange Order who were prepared to protest for the right to march in Drumcree have backed off and urged compromise, saying no road is worth a life...
...BELFAST, Northern Ireland: Perhaps the habit of violence can be changed after all. With the standoff in Portadown ready to turn into a massive weekend eruption, Protestant would-be marchers and the Catholic residents they would march past were talking Friday -- through intermediaries -- about a compromise. "Northern Ireland has run to the edge of the abyss, looked over, and decided they don't really want to jump," says TIME London bureau chief Barry Hillenbrand in Belfast. "The fact they're talking, even indirectly, is an amazing accomplishment...
...BELFAST, Northern Ireland: The first major eruption in the Irish peace is proving difficult to douse. As Protestant rioting intensified Monday and Tuesday and as rubber bullets flew, the exhortations in Belfast were divided along familiar lines: Talk or fight. On the side of dialogue: David Trimble, leader of Northern Ireland's largest Protestant party, and British prime minister Tony Blair, who have been in close contact over how to defuse the situation...
...voices of war are always eager to be heard. "This is a battle that has to be won ?- no ifs, no buts!" shouted Democratic Unionist Party leader Ian Paisley, the chief opponent of April's peace agreement, upon arriving at the standoff site in Portadown, 30 miles outside of Belfast, to huge applause from the Orange Order crowd. Worried Trimble: "This situation has the capacity to destabilize... it could put at risk all the political progress we have achieved." Trimble has the will to make peace. He may now find out whether, as newly elected first minister of the Northern...