Word: iras
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...IRA, in fact, came close to killing both of Blair's immediate predecessors, bombing a hotel where Margaret Thatcher was staying in 1984 and exploding mortars only yards away from where John Major was holding a cabinet meeting in 1991. That Blair shared the gallery with men once accused of being IRA leaders was a sign of how much has changed in Northern Ireland...
...opening of the power-sharing government at Stormont, outside Belfast, came after more than 30 years of violence, followed by a decade of false starts and dashed dreams. Even then, this agreement has the air of finality about it, not least because it carries the silent approval of the IRA leadership...
...months ago the Reverend Ian Paisley, the thunderous, 81-year-old Protestant preacher who leads the unionists, said the IRA's political allies, Sinn Fein, would enter government "over our dead bodies." Paisley is now the First Minister of Northern Ireland, heading the new administration alongside former IRA leader Martin McGuinness. These days he reckons the region is "starting upon the road - I emphasize starting - which I believe will take us to lasting peace...
...opted to be represented at the negotiating table by tougher parties. A majority of Protestant voters thought Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party, which had rejected the earlier process, offered the best to chance to stop Sinn Fein from dominating; many Catholics felt safest being represented by Sinn Fein, the IRA's political allies...
...lesson would be the subtle use of carrots and sticks: Blair was frequently berated by Unionists - usually Paisley - for granting concessions to the IRA. But he usually did so only in exchange for an irreversible step by the militants: First they gave up their campaign of violence; then they destroyed their weapons. This year, as one of the final pieces of the jigsaw, Irish nationalists gave up their longstanding taboo against cooperating with the Northern Ireland police...