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A surreal atmosphere prevails at Stormont, the hill overlooking Belfast which is home to Northern Ireland's devolved administration. It is not the return of a power-sharing government that has people [...]

It was more like something from a spy thriller than a seminal political meeting. On the night of January 29th Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, the leader of Northern Ireland's Democratic Unionist [...]

BREXIT WAS bound to be difficult for Northern Ireland, since it has the uk's only land border with the EU. All sides agreed that a hard north-south border with customs [...]

A choice Donaldson cannot duck What if Britain and the EU ever reach a deal on the protocol? T HE BIGGEST decision of Sir Jeffrey Donaldson's career is still over [...]

The queen helped with the process of reconciliation I N JUNE AN opinion poll for the Sunday Independent, an Irish newspaper, revealed that Queen Elizabeth II was more popular than [...]

A row over Northern Ireland threatens scientific research in Britain K EVIN LAM is a chemist at the University of Greenwich working to kill two birds with one stone. He [...]

How the political successors to the ira became so rich IN 1995 PHIL GRAMM, a Republican senator for Texas, boasted he had 'the most reliable friend you can have in [...]

Sinn Fein is the opposite of the Democratic Unionist Party and Boris Johnson's Conservatives. It thinks long-term. It is patient, strategic and disciplined. Thus, five years ago, to advance the [...]

Easter Monday marks the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. One of the most interesting things ever written by its most famous architect, Tony Blair, appeared (in the Sunday [...]

Disillusionment. That's the feeling these days among many people like myself who have been the most passionate advocates of the Good Friday Agreement. When I hear Arlene Foster's extraordinary choice [...]

The vote, that is, for Brexit. But not, of course, for The Good Friday (or Belfast) Agreement. And therein--in the striking difference between those two votes--lies the potential of momentous [...]

Everything is dislocated in my flat at the minute. Cookery books are on the floor, next to plastic toys. Phones are stuffed down the back of the sofa. A large [...]

As well as feeling freed up, I felt angry also. The quarter century we have lived through was a terrible black hole, and the inestimable suffering inflicted and endured by [...]

I recall one ecstatic night when everything seemed possible in our Peace Process. It was the evening of 30 November 1995. President Clinton had arrived to switch on our Christmas [...]

During 1997-98 I was a Senior Fellow at the United States Institute of Peace in Washington, D.C. It was a wonderful opportunity to study the American input into the peace [...]

The snow was coming down in flurries that Easter of April 1998. Huddled journalists from all over the world were reduced to interviewing each other to justify the wait for [...]

This essay appeared in 'Inaugural Issue: Belfast in Europe' (Volume 1, Number 1, 2002), the first issue of Irish Pages. Afternoon weather was the metaphor. On the Tuesday before the [...]

It couldn't go on. The carnage, destruction, fear and chaos had to stop, the alternative being that two intractable forces, nationalist and unionist, would wipe one another out like a [...]

If Sinn Fein emerges with the most seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly elections this week, it will not be because the party has grown in popularity since the last [...]

The premise of ''Question Time,'' the weekly BBC political discussion show, is simple: A panel of guests fields questions from the audience on matters of the day, responding mostly with [...]

Parties form unprecedented pacts in a bid to unseat their enemies IN NORTHERN IRELAND Brexit has served mainly to harden already uncompromising attitudes. But in the election campaign there are [...]

The shabby treatment of the DUP should worry those who prize peace FOR A FEW minutes, it seemed like old times. On October 21st the Democratic Unionist Party walked back [...]

Problems mount as the region passes 1,000 days with no one at the helm FANS APPROACHING the Oval football stadium are greeted by a tall, dark-green stand. From seats at [...]

If the game of chicken ends in a crash, Ireland is where it will happen ONLY A FEW years ago London and Dublin were congratulating each other on forging a [...]

What is peace? It is not resolution of all disputes. It is avoiding armed struggle. It is non-violent politics. What does it mean, a generation of peace, twenty years since [...]