Word: ulsterization
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...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...
...Ulster the move was greeted more with sadness than with anger. There was little eager finger pointing at the I.R.A., just a kind of disappointment that the road to peace had once more reached a seemingly impassable stretch. On the ground, 30 years of the Troubles are effectively over. Paramilitary killings and bombings have dwindled. The economy is booming at 5% annual growth. The fledgling multiparty government, grappling surprisingly skillfully with the mundane tasks of locating new hospitals and funding schools, had begun to convince people that the province might soon face ordinary problems instead of extraordinary ones...
...Northern Ireland was given to a local cabinet including both unionists and nationalists. The establishment of this government was a major accomplishment, as few expected ever to see Gerry Adams, the leader of IRA-allied Sinn Fein, sitting at the same table with David Trimble, the leader of the Ulster Unionists...
...their supporters. Britain has given the IRA until Friday to provide a "credible commitment" to disarm, failing which it will suspend the territory's historic joint assembly and executive. That would flash-freeze the peace process, which London considers preferable to allowing the total collapse that would result if Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble carries out his threat to resign by February 12 in the absence of any disarmament. The crisis reflects the mood of the hard-liners on both sides unconvinced by the compromises struck by their leaders. "For a long time Adams complained that Trimble hadn't prepared...