Word: iras
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...ordering them away from the front line and up the hill for tea and sandwiches at the local minister's house. For the first time in memory, they listened. But for how long? Protestant leader David Trimble has set a condition for his restless constituency?s newfound docility: An IRA statement confirming disarmament plans. British Prime Minister Tony Blair is going ahead without it, and by Parliamentary decree Northern Ireland?s new Protestant-Catholic government must be formed on July 15. It is to be led by Trimble, who finds himself nudged further and further out on the proverbial limb...
...lowest O.D.C. rates in Western Europe (O.D.C. being an acronym for "ordinary, decent crime," as distinguished from political violence by the people here). Assuming you're not out on the streets draped in a Union Jack or the Irish tri-colors, or running guns for the IRA, the average American tourist is probably about as safe here as anywhere else...
...July 4. After marathon talks failed to yield a breakthrough two days after passing their deadline, British prime minister Tony Blair announced Friday that his government would simply implement the next stage of the peace process without waiting for republicans and loyalists to agree on the handover of IRA weapons. Loyalist politicians had sought to delay the creation of the Northern Ireland Assembly's executive, which would include two seats for the republican Sinn Fein, until the IRA begins decommissioning its weapons. By legislatively enabling the creation of the executive, London is effectively endorsing Sinn Fein's position that...
...into the deal, and he offered on Tuesday to intervene personally to save the agreement. Blair and Ahern have grounds to be optimistic, since the deadlock over whether members of the Sinn Fein party will be allowed to take their seats in a new Northern Ireland assembly before the IRA has turned over at least some of its guns appears to be a primarily symbolic issue. On the other hand, the fact that both sides have refused to budge on a who-goes-first quarrel despite the late hour suggests the breakdown signals a case of cold feet on both...
...gesture being demanded of the IRA ?- a small-scale decommissioning of arms ?- is essentially symbolic, but that symbolism cuts to the core of the historic confrontation between loyalists who want the province to remain part of Britain and nationalists who believe they?re fighting an anti-colonial war. If the institutions agreed on last year were designed to shift the conflict from a paramilitary to a political track and foster a basis for coexistence between the republican Catholic and loyalist Protestant communities, then the breakdown over weapons signals the scale of that challenge. All that, of course...