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NORTHERN IRELAND - He's a poet, a fisherman, a chess-player, a family man described as considerate and thoughtful, someone who cares about nature and the environment, passionate yet even-tempered.
No, this is not some dreamy, liberal: it is Martin McGuinness, icon of republican militancy, who from tomorrow will be running Northern Ireland with the Rev Ian Paisley.
Unlikely is far too mild a word to describe this emerging partnership between two lifelong adversaries, the dedicated republican and the staunch loyalist. Yet last week they astonished Belfast by conducting a news conference together - joking, joshing and exuding large amounts of twinkling geniality.
"Martin is a people person," says one who works closely with him. "People warm to him, they just do. It's early days, but he and Ian Paisley are just getting on with the business. It's astonishing."
Yet it should come as no surprise that McGuinness can forge close ties with people. His relationship with Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, has proved crucial in persuading their republican movement to shed many outdated practices.
Together they have recast a party, previously hidebound by the past, into Ireland's most pragmatic political outfit. During many tense moments it was the McGuinness reputation for flinty, sea-green incorruptibility that reassured traditionalists Adams was not moving too far, too fast.
McGuinness was not always in the business of twinkling geniality, or of making friends and influencing people.
He began as a trainee butcher in Derry and in the early 1970s, when Northern Ireland exploded into sustained violence, conventional life ended for him.
He was still a teenager when he turned full-time to guerrilla warfare, rising quickly to a high position within the IRA.
His units did a great deal of damage to Derry with a campaign that made it look, in the words of one observer, as if it had been bombed from the air.
The British Army in particular had cause to regret his streetfighting skills: it lost more than two dozen soldiers, gunned down on Derry streets. He himself dodged many bullets, once admitting that he had been "fired at by the British Army on countless occasions over 20 years". He was good at evading the law, however, serving just two short prison sentences.
He was high in the IRA from an early age, and was only 22 when the Government smuggled him and other republicans over to Chelsea for secret talks. The meeting was unproductive, the authorities saying he and other IRA leaders had presented "impossible demands and absurd ultimatums".
Many years went by without McGuinness budging, and the death toll mounted. Sinn Fein made limited political progress, but remained outcasts as IRA violence went on. That was back in the days when Paisley was fighting elections holding a sledgehammer under the slogan "Smash Sinn Fein".
But that was then, this is now: today Paisley has no sledgehammer. McGuinness has no IRA any more, and is committed to the idea that the freedom of Ireland can be achieved without it.
Somewhere over the years he morphed from the icon of militarism into the politician of today who has been seasoned by meetings with British, Irish and American representatives.
Republicans retained their faith in his integrity and apparent refusal to compromise, but as time passed both he and they got deeper into politics, the business of negotiation, and give and take. It has brought him to this once inconceivable point where he will be number two in government. But no one believes he cares about reaching office for its own sake, or making money, or that he has given up on the republican goal of a united Ireland.
Life is hectic for him. About to become a senior minister, he is a Westminster MP, a member of the Belfast Assembly, and his party's chief negotiator. He is also spending much time in the south of Ireland where he is canvassing in the general election.
In a previous Northern Ireland administration he was regarded as the best of the 10 departmental ministers, impressing officials and political rivals alike with his performance as Education Minister. "He was the best of the lot," said a Unionist opponent.
The surprise at his success in the education brief was all the greater since, like Adams, he left school at an early age, without much education.
His last spell in government did not last long, falling apart because of IRA misbehaviour. But now the organisation he once helped to lead seems to have gone away, with republicans prepared to rely on McGuinness' political skills rather than his military prowess. When it became clear that a McGuinness-Paisley partnership was in prospect it was said it would be "a battle a day". But today they are conducting themselves with good humour, without rancour.
- INDEPENDENT
