Northern Ireland Revolts

Two British soldiers in civilian clothes were seized, stripped naked, beaten and shot to death on Saturday after their unmarked car was trapped in an IRA funeral procession in Roman Catholic West Belfast. The Irish Republican Army claimed responsibility for the killings in a statement released to Belfast news media. British army sources said the men, who were not immediately identified, appeared to have blundered into the procession.

Protestant hard-liners have suspended their controversial blockade near a Roman Catholic school in Belfast, in which children ran a daily gantlet of sectarian hatred. Dozens of girls, some as young as 4, have endured a daily torrent of insults and obscenities from Protestant adults for nearly 12 weeks as their parents led them to the Holy Cross Primary School in the Ardoyne district of the British province's capital.

"This is the Irish Republican Army. A bomb is set to go off at the train station in 40 minutes' time. The code word is Shamrock." Or maybe it's Ballymena. Or Easter Rising. Or Michael Collins. For more than two decades, the IRA has used a movable feast of code words to authenticate its bomb warnings. The words change from time to time, but insiders say their meaning is always clear: "This is the real thing."

The Irish Republican Army jettisoned guns that had been pointed at Protestants for 30 years. The British army dismantled surveillance towers that had symbolized occupation to Roman Catholic nationalists. The peace process was saved. And on the streets of Northern Ireland, no one came out to cheer. Politicians hailed the historic moment, but average men and women went about their business as usual.

Facing threats of a standoff by Northern Ireland's major Protestant brotherhood, authorities said Saturday that they would allow the group to hold a mass demonstration near hostile Catholic turf. The Northern Ireland Parades Commission decision to lift its earlier ban came after leaders of the Orange Order protested, raising the possibility of an ugly standoff between the group and police. The demonstration is scheduled for Monday.

After one of the bloodiest weeks in Northern Ireland in recent years, the British government Monday announced an urgent review of security measures for politically volatile funeral processions in the troubled province. Speaking to a crowded, subdued House of Commons, Britain's secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Tom King, defended a recently adopted policy under which the police are to stay clear of funerals for members of the outlawed Irish Republican Army.

Six Irishmen wrongly convicted and jailed 16 years ago in the Irish Republican Army's deadliest attacks in Britain won their freedom in a court hearing Thursday, ending a case that shook faith in Britain's justice system and police. The appeal by the "Birmingham Six" followed the quashing of other convictions in connection with bomb attacks in Britain by the Irish Republican Army.

Pro-British loyalists tried to blow up an office of the IRA's political wing, Sinn Fein, in this provincial capital Sunday in an apparent breach of their 1994 cease-fire. The British Broadcasting Corp. quoted loyalist sources as saying the attempt was a "measured" response to attacks by their Irish Republican Army foes, who seek to end British rule.

Sometimes a playwright's native land is the most fertile soil from which to mine dramatic conflicts. For Athol Fugard, it's South Africa. For Tennessee Williams, it was the American South. For Graham Reid, who is just beginning to be known in this country, it is Belfast, Ireland. These writers find meaning in their particular circumstances that reverberates worldwide.

Not long ago, parts of this great port lay burned and bombed out, a vast security fence encircled the central shopping area and the populace--both Catholic and Protestant--was grim and dispirited. People were calling the capital of Northern Ireland "the Beirut of Western Europe" and "Bloody Belfast." Today, there's a spirit of hope in the air. The 300,000 residents talk of a new Belfast.

In a historic bid to end Northern Ireland's three-decade armed conflict, Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams called on the Irish Republican Army on Monday to give up its guns to save the Good Friday peace process. Adams issued the call to party activists in Belfast, Northern Ireland, as Sinn Fein negotiator Martin McGuinness delivered the message to Irish American supporters in New York--choreographed steps by the IRA's political wing apparently designed to prepare their base for disarmament.

A mobile phone used by an IRA splinter group that planted a bomb in the town of Omagh three years ago belonged to the only defendant charged in the devastating Northern Ireland attack, a police witness told Ireland's anti-terrorist court. On the second day of the Dublin trial of Colm Murphy, a pub owner charged with conspiring to cause explosions in Northern Ireland, a senior detective testified that police seized two mobile phones and phone bills during a 1999 raid on Murphy's home.

A shadowy Protestant gang claimed responsibility Saturday for shooting to death a Catholic investigative journalist, the first such slaying in the 30-year history of this British province's conflict. The killing of Martin O'Hagan, 51, as he walked home from a pub in his hometown of Lurgan raised pressure on Britain to crack down on outlawed Protestant groups, which are supposed to be observing cease-fires in support of Northern Ireland's 1998 peace accord.

A Catholic journalist was killed in a drive-by shooting hours after Britain warned Northern Ireland's largest outlawed Protestant group to stop attacks on Catholics and police or face the consequences. Police said Martin O'Hagan was killed walking home in Lurgan, a town southwest of Belfast. No group claimed responsibility. O'Hagan had made many enemies with his hard-hitting reports on the Protestant paramilitary. The shooting came after Britain announced the Ulster Defense Assn.

In what qualifies as progress on the mean streets of Northern Ireland, Protestant demonstrators turned their backs on pipe bombs and stone-throwing Thursday but not on the hatred that often has made North Belfast a front line of the province's sectarian conflict. The Ardoyne neighborhood, where Roman Catholic girls and their parents walked a gantlet of abuse to school for the last four days, is a hard place with hardened people.

In a scene reminiscent of the worst days of U.S. school desegregation, Protestant extremists in Northern Ireland threw a homemade bomb at Roman Catholic girls and their parents walking to school Wednesday through a gantlet of hatred and riot police. Two police officers were wounded in the blast claimed by an outlawed Protestant paramilitary group that calls itself the Red Hand Defenders.

Protestant marchers and Roman Catholic protesters struck a compromise Monday designed to prevent clashes this weekend in Londonderry, the crucible of Northern Ireland's conflict. The announcement by the Apprentice Boys marchers and the Bogside Residents Group protesters eased fears that the Protestants' annual parade will trigger violence Saturday as it has in previous years. The parade will be permitted, but with few marchers allowed near the town's main Catholic neighborhood.

Three Irish nationals were formally charged Monday with conspiring to murder Britain's secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Tom King. The three, two men and a woman, are believed by the police to be linked to the outlawed Irish Republican Army, which has waged a guerrilla campaign against British rule in Northern Ireland since the 1920s.

A key Roman Catholic political party joined church leaders Monday in breathing new life into the Northern Ireland peace process by backing a plan to overhaul the province's Protestant-dominated police force. Leaders of the Social Democratic and Labor Party, or SDLP, agreed to nominate representatives to a 19-member civilian Policing Board and appealed to young Catholics to join the force, which is known as the Royal Ulster Constabulary.

The British government published a long-awaited plan Friday for overhauling Northern Ireland's police department by opening the door for more Catholic officers, renaming the agency, reducing its size and even introducing a new badge and unit flag. But the proposed changes to the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the agency that polices the restive province, failed to win the approval of Northern Ireland's hard-line Roman Catholic and Protestant groups.