Word: irelanders
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...foundations so painstakingly built by those who sought peace could not stand the weight of bitter history. Northern Ireland's promising experiment in coalition government ended after only 72 days when Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary, Peter Mandelson, suspended it last week and reimposed direct rule from London. He was avoiding what he considered a worse fate--the resignation of David Trimble, the government's First Minister and leader of the Ulster Unionists who in November promised his party to quit unless the Irish Republican Army began to surrender its guns and explosives...
...I.R.A. did not hammer its Semtex into plowshares--and refused even to offer a date when it would start. So Mandelson put the Ulster government in a kind of suspended animation, a political trick that may let him resolve the disarmament issue--"decommissioning," in peacemaking jargon--without destroying Northern Ireland's fragile coalition. But that will be a difficult trick. With recriminations rising and momentum flowing backward, Ulster's peace process is facing its worst crisis in years...
...British and the unionists have shown that they will share the government of Ireland with the IRA and begin to disarm. Their request in return has been for the IRA to give up its weapons of terror. Unionist hard-liners have maintained that the IRA will never willingly give up its weapons, and, at least for now, they have been proven correct...
...local government is reinstated, as the original accord envisioned. It is in the IRA's best interest to try to salvage the peace process now. The British have shown that they will be reasonable, and the unionists have demonstrated that they are dedicated to a peaceful future for Northern Ireland. The Irish citizens, north and south, wish for peace, as evidenced by their votes in support of the Good Friday pact. If the IRA continues to be the primary obstacle to that peace, its domestic support will wither away...
...responsible for delays and derailments of the peace process in the past. Both have made tough concessions. However, this time the IRA is at fault. The group should realize that it has a genuine opportunity to lay down its arms honorably and finally participate in the government of Northern Ireland...