A shaky start for Northern Ireland

PETER MUHLY/AFP

Northern Ireland's two main political parties, the Catholic Sinn Fein and the Protestant Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), have agreed to inaugurate a new power-sharing government in May of this year. The announcement came after a first-ever meeting between Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and DUP premier Reverend Ian Paisley. The two agreed to take the reigns of power on May 8, 2007, after months of toing-and-froing over the twin issues of power-sharing and policing. Governments across the globe have hailed the meeting and the agreement as marking a new era for Northern Ireland's 1.6 million people.

"In a sense, everything we've done in the last ten years has been a preparation for this moment," exclaimed Tony Blair, while a State Department spokesman described the events as "historic."

There is a strong whiff of déjà-vu in the air. Such millennial rhetoric was wheeled out for last year's St Andrew's Agreement, and before that for the Good Friday Agreement of 1998. Today, what was not said was much more significant. Thus far, Rev. Paisley has not explained why he agreed to power-sharing in May while dismissing Sinn Fein overtures to meet the previous deadline for a new government, which passed today. He has been much more vocal on the familiar theme of his "justified loathing" of Sinn Fein's paramilitary past, and the lack of a handshake between the two leaders today was painfully conspicuous.

As new beginnings go, this was decidedly inauspicious.