For the second straight evening, Belfast was hit by sectarian riots and violent clashes with police, further destabilizing Northern Ireland and threatening the already shaky 1998 peace accord. The trouble started on Tuesday, when a Protestant mob began throwing rocks and prevented Catholic school girls from leaving Holy Cross Girls' Primary School. The school is located on one of the few remaining...

Yesterday Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader and First Minister of the currently-suspended Northern Irish government David Trimble announced that he would rejoin the power-sharing executive alongside Sinn Fein, provided he receives majority support at the May 27 meeting of the 860-member Ulster Unionist Council. Events in Northern Ireland have taken on a new momentum since the May 6 announcement...

Ireland has a great deal of historic material culture to preserve, especially when one considers its history and patterns of human settlement over the preceding millennia. In 1995, the Heritage Council was established under the Heritage Act of 1995 with a primary role "to propose policies and priorities for the identification, protection, preservation and enhancement of the national heritage....

Secretary John Reid announced today that Northern Ireland's devolved government would be suspended, effective midnight tonight, to allow more time to resolve disputes, most centrally over the decommissioning of the IRA. The suspension comes in the wake of John Trimble's July 1 resignation as first minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly because the IRA had not yet disarmed. Reid said he hoped...

Supporters of the peace process took heart in this week's developments in Northern Ireland. Eleven weeks ago, former US Senator George Mitchell revived his role as mediator and conducted a review of the peace process, which was stalled in mutual recriminations and acrimony. The central issue was, and remains, decommissioning, the surrender of arms by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) and Loyalist...

CELT, an archive of documents relating to Irish culture and history at University College, Cork, has made available the full text of the historic proposed peace treaty for Northern Ireland. Aimed at ending many years of sectarian violence, the treaty was reached after arduous and intense negotiations. The agreement is to be voted upon by the people of both Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic...