KEY POINTS:
BELFAST - Northern Ireland's main Protestant and Catholic parties agreed today to start sharing power on May 8 after their leaders put aside decades of hostility to hold a historic first meeting.
Hardline Protestant cleric Ian Paisley, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), sat side-by-side with Gerry Adams, head of the mainly Catholic Sinn Fein, to announce the ground-breaking deal to govern the British province.
"We must not allow our justified loathing of the horrors and tragedies of the past to become a barrier to creating a better and more stable future for our children," Paisley said after the meeting at Belfast's imposing assembly building.
Britain and Ireland have pushed Northern Ireland's feuding parties for years to agree to share power, seeing it as a crucial step toward cementing peace in the province of 1.6 million people that has been torn by years of violence.
Adams said that after centuries of conflict and hurt "now there is a new start, with the help of God".
The meeting brought together Paisley, the 80-year-old cleric famous since the 1960s as an outspoken defender of Northern Ireland's place in the United Kingdom and the 58-year-old Adams, once hunted by the British army as a guerrilla suspect.
Paisley has always refused to talk to Adams because of Sinn Fein's alliance with the Irish Republican Army (IRA) guerrilla group which was responsible for nearly half of the 3,600 killings during 30 years of sectarian conflict.
But on Monday, both men sat within a few feet of each other around a table. There was no public handshake.
Power of politics
Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain said the meeting was "a graphic manifestation of the power of politics over bigotry, bitterness and horror".
The power-sharing government will run Northern Ireland's day-to-day affairs but London will retain sovereignty over the province, which has a Protestant majority.
His popularity undermined by the Iraq war and political scandals, British Prime Minister Tony Blair was eager for a breakthrough in Northern Ireland to seal his peace-broking legacy before he steps down in a few months time.
The DUP wants to maintain Northern Ireland's links with Britain while Sinn Fein's ultimate aim is a united Ireland.
The British government had told both sides they must share power from Monday or accept indefinite direct rule from London. But Paisley's DUP said on Saturday it wanted a delay until May.
Britain eagerly accepted a compromise that saw Catholics and Protestants come together to hammer out a deal among themselves.
The government will rush emergency legislation through the British parliament on Tuesday to prevent the Northern Ireland assembly being closed down, Hain said.
While the DUP and Sinn Fein are ideologically poles apart, they have similar approaches to community politics and have adopted the same stance on issues such as London's plan to impose water charges in the province -- which they both oppose.
Hain, a former anti-apartheid campaigner, also pointed to South Africa as an example of how agreements between the "most polarised parties", had the best chance of sticking.
Blair hailed the deal as a very important day for the people of Northern Ireland: "In a sense everything we've done in the last 10 years has been a preparation for this moment," he said.
His Irish counterpart Bertie Ahern said the agreement "has the potential to transform the future of this island".
State Department spokesman Tom Casey said: "This was a historic meeting ... This is certainly a very positive step and one that moves the process forward."
The assembly was set up under 1998's Good Friday peace deal, which largely stemmed decades of bloodshed. It was suspended in 2002 amid spying allegations, however. Paisley opposed the 1998 pact and had rejected earlier power-sharing attempts.
- REUTERS
