Northern Ireland peacemakers warn of new dangers 20 years on

BELFAST/ DUBLIN: The leaders who brokered a peace deal for Northern Ireland in 1998 marked its 20th anniversary yesterday by warning that a hardening political divide and Britain’s exit from the EU were creating new dangers for the region.

Former US President Bill Clinton and ex-British Prime Minister Tony Blair joined Irish and Northern Irish politicians in Belfast to mark the breakthrough on April 10, 1998 that called an end to 30 years of sectarian violence in which around 3,600 people died.

But the collapse early last year of the power- sharing administration at the heart of that deal meant there was no devolved government to greet them – and little sign of the province’s Irish nationalists and pro- British unionists resolving the differences that have again divided them.

“We have to be very, very careful,” said former US Senator George Mitchell, who chaired the talks that led to the agreement, when asked by Irish state broadcaster RTE if there was a danger of a return to violence.

“Nothing guaranteed.”

Northern Ireland was quickly transformed by the deal, with the Irish Republican Army, responsible for most of the killings, agreeing to give up its weapons and the British army dismantling its armed checkpoints and withdrawing.

But while the outbreaks of violence have all but ended, the region’s politics has become more polarised – leading in January 2017 to the collapse of devolved power- sharing for the first time in a decade. — Reuters in life is