Word: irelands
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Almost ten years to the day after he first set about trying to solve the Northern Ireland conflict, British Prime Minister Tony Blair leaned forward in his gallery seat at the moment of truth: In the hushed, wood-panelled chamber of the region's Assembly, onetime enemies formally pledged to run the government together. It was a moment that secured Blair's best hope for a positive legacy, even as he entered the final days of his premiership still dogged by Iraq...
...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...
...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...
...that's the welcome most such leaders could expect. But this feels different. There's a ripple of excitement by the dairy goods, a frisson by the freezers, as word spreads: Bertie is here. The people of Navan, northwest of Dublin, respond to their Taoiseach - the official title of Ireland's Prime Minister - not with fatigue or ill temper, but with an awe and affection usually reserved for rock stars. As Bertie Ahern kicks off his campaign for elections expected within weeks, he remains startlingly popular for a man seeking a third consecutive term. And if there's a reversal...
Yeltsin was a unique political mix. He combined a folksy, Reaganesque simplicity with a Nixonian sense of political intrigue (and paranoia) plus a tendency toward accidents that recalled Gerald Ford. On one occasion he was too drunk to leave his plane for a planned meeting with Ireland's Prime Minister--even though, I was told, aides slapped him to bring him to consciousness...