Northern Ireland's main Protestant and Catholic parties agreed yesterday to start sharing power on May 8 after their leaders put aside decades of hostility to hold a historic first meeting.
Hardline Protestant cleric Ian Paisley, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), sat side-by-side with Gerry Adams, head of the mainly Catholic Sinn Fein, to announce the ground-breaking deal to govern the British province.
"Today we've agreed with Sinn Fein that this date will be Tuesday, May 8, 2007," Mr Paisley said after the meeting at the Northern Ireland assembly's imposing building in Belfast.
"We must not allow our justified loathing of the horrors and tragedies of the past to become a barrier to creating a better and more stable future for our children," Mr Paisley said.
Britain and Ireland have been pushing Northern Ireland's feuding parties for years to agree to share power, seeing it as a crucial step towards cementing peace in the province of 1.6 million people that has been torn apart by years of violence. Mr Adams said relationships between the people of Ireland had been marred by centuries of conflict and hurt but "now there is a new start, with the help of God".
Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain said the pictures of Paisley and Adams' meeting were "a graphic manifestation of the power of politics over bigotry, bitterness and horror".
With his popularity undermined by the Iraq war and political scandals, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been eager for a breakthrough in Northern Ireland to seal his peace-broking legacy before he steps down in a few months time.
The DUP wants to maintain Northern Ireland's links with Britain while Sinn Fein's ultimate aim is a united Ireland. Britain will retain sovereignty over the province, which has a Protestant majority. The British government had told both sides they must start jointly running Northern Ireland's day-to-day affairs as from yesterday or accept indefinite direct rule from London. But Paisley's DUP said on Saturday it wanted a delay until May.
The British government eagerly accepted the compromise because it was agreed by Catholics and Protestants.
The government will rush emergency legislation through the British parliament today to prevent the Northern Ireland assembly being closed down, Mr Hain said.
For a power-sharing deal to stick, it had to be agreed by the two largest, most polarised parties, Mr Hain, a former anti-apartheid activist said, pointing to parallels with the end of white minority rule in South Africa. Tony Blair hailed the deal as a very important day for the people of Northern Ireland: "In a sense, everything we've done in the last 10 years has been a preparation for this moment," he said.
His Irish counterpart Bertie Ahern said the agreement "has the potential to transform the future of this island".
US State Department spokesman Tom Casey said: "This was a historic meeting... This is certainly a very positive step and one that moves the process forward. We welcome it."
Mr Paisley has always refused to talk to Gerry Adams because of Sinn Fein's alliance with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) guerrilla group which was responsible for nearly half of the 3,600 killings during 30 years of sectarian conflict.
But yesterday, both men sat within a few feet of each other around a table. There was no public handshake.
Mr Paisley is expected to become first minister in the devolved Northern Ireland administration, while Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness would be deputy first minister.
The assembly was set up under 1998's Good Friday peace agreement, which largely stemmed decades of sectarian bloodshed. It was suspended in 2002 amid allegations of an IRA spy ring operating in the building.
Mr Paisley opposed the 1998 pact and has rejected earlier power-sharing attempts. The IRA met Mr Paisley's central demand in 2005 when it pledged to disarm and pursue its aim of a united Ireland peacefully.
Northern Ireland today has a population of 1,685,000.
A 2001 census showed that 53.1 per cent of the population is Protestant and 43.8 per cent embrace Roman Catholic beliefs.
With regards to government, Northern Ireland is considered as part of the United Kingdom but under the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement a Protestant-Catholic power-sharing assembly was established in Belfast with limited home rule powers. This was, however, suspended in 2002 and direct rule from London resumed.
Northern Ireland's sectarian divisions can be traced back to the 17th Century when Protestant settlers from Scotland and England were "planted" in the north eastern part of the island to bolster the authority of the English Crown.
An abortive uprising against British rule in Dublin in 1916 paved the way for 1921's Anglo-Irish Treaty which partitioned the island, separating the mainly Protestant northeast from the overwhelmingly Catholic south and west.
Simmering sectarian tensions exploded into violence in the late 1960s, with British troops under attack from Irish Republican Army guerrillas. Militant Protestant "loyalist" groups sought to defend British rule by killing Catholics.
A low-level guerrilla war raged for the next 30 years, claiming more than 3,600 lives. The IRA called a ceasefire in 1997 and a year later the landmark Good Friday peace agreement was signed, setting up a power-sharing assembly at Stormont in Belfast. The assembly has been suspended several times amid political in-fighting and has been on ice since 2002. Power sharing will restart on May 8, 2007, after DUP leader Ian Paisley's first face-to-face meeting with Sinn Fein leader, Gerry Adams.
Fact Box
Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams
• Once hunted by the British army as a guerrilla suspect, Adams has been the public face of Irish nationalism in Northern Ireland for more than two decades.
• The eldest of 10 children, Gerry Adams was born in October 1948 into a West Belfast family steeped in revolutionary politics. His forebears were in groups that were forerunners to the IRA but he says he had little awareness of sectarian politics until 1964.
• Mr Adams, president of Sinn Fein since 1983, has always denied membership of the IRA though he is widely held to have been on its leadership council until shortly before the group agreed to give up its weapons.
• A member of the British parliament, Gerry Adams has always refused to take his seat because he would be required to swear loyalty to Queen Elizabeth.
• Loathed by pro-British unionists but lionised by Irish republicans, Mr Adams saw 1998's Good Friday peace deal as a way out of conflict. In 2005 he appealed to the IRA to use words, not guns, to fulfil its aim of ending British rule in the province and months later the group said it had ordered its guerrillas to dump all arms.
N. Ireland's Ian Paisley
• Born in 1926 in Armagh, the son of a dissident Baptist minister, he delivered his first sermon aged 16 and founded his own breakaway Free Presbyterian Church in 1951. Fiercely critical of the Catholic Church, Ian Paisley once famously branded the Pope "the Anti-Christ"
• Emerged as a political force in the 1960s, leading protests over issues such as the flying of Irish flags in Belfast, and in 1971 set up the Democratic Unionist Party which became the province's biggest political party in 2005.
• His defence of Northern Ireland's position within the UK - encapsulated in the war-cry "No Surrender" - and his opposition to the Catholic Church have made him a hero to many Protestants but a rabble-rousing bigot to many Catholics.
• He resisted all previous attempts to broker a political settlement and has up till now refused to talk to arch-enemy Sinn Fein, which he viewed as indistinguishable from the Irish Republican Army guerrilla group which waged a bloody 30-year campaign against British rule and which was responsible for nearly half of the 3,600 killings during the sectarian conflict.
• First elected to the British parliament in 1970 and to the European parliament in 1979, he was viewed as a spent force after opposing a 1998 peace deal but his uncompromising stance would later win him support from disillusioned Protestants.
• In 2005 the IRA met Ian Paisley's central demand when it pledged to disarm and pursue its aim of a united Ireland peacefully.