Turning the Tables on Northern Ireland

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Taboos aren't broken easily. When Ian Paisley, the 81-year-old leader of Northern Ireland's Protestants, decided to change the habit of a very long lifetime and talk to his former enemies, there was a last-minute wrangle about the seating arrangements. Sinn Fein, the largest Catholic party, wanted their leader, Gerry Adams, to sit beside Paisley when the two men announced they are ready to revive the region's power-sharing government in May. Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party thought that was too cozy; they wanted the men facing each other from opposite sides of the table.

Eventually, by passing notes and talking through British government officials, the two sides turned the square table into a diamond, with Paisley and Adams sitting on each side of the top point. It was a very Irish sort of compromise: they sat close together but on different sides, separated by a sharp edge.

It is a fitting start for their partnership. Paisley and Adams are the respective hate figures for the two sides of Northern Ireland's ancient religious divide. Both men have followers who would have once happily killed the other.

Nevertheless, the region's stuttering peace process had long been leading towards their meeting at Stormont, the seat of Northern Ireland's government on the outskirts of Belfast. But even though it was considered inevitable, the sight of the men together came as a welcome shock to many. "I knew it was going to happen," said Brian Feeney, the author of a history of Sinn Fein. "Even so, when I looked up at the TV screen and saw them, it was like being hit by a bus."

That's largely because Paisley had been so resistant to the idea. The leader of the Democratic Unionist Party and a fiery fundamentalist Christian preacher, he has long played the role of wrecker in Northern Ireland. He made his name in politics by opposing any kind of political accommodation with Northern Ireland's Catholic minority.

That was even before the sectarian fault lines in the region exploded into violence that lasted for more than 30 years and claimed more than 3,700 lives. When Adams, reputedly a leader of the Irish Republican Army, began turning the terrorist movement into a political force in 1980s, Paisley vowed to "smash" him and his supporters.

That kind of rhetoric routinely led to accusations that Paisley was putting more people in the firing line. But he set aside the harsh words to meet Adams, saying they owed it to the dead to "craft and build the best future possible."

So what changed the mind of the man known as Dr. No? Big factors have been the IRA's renunciation of violence and the decommissioning of its weapons, followed recently by Adams's recognition of the legitimacy of Northern Ireland's police.

Age has mellowed Paisley, but the whiff of power also helps. Paisley dismantled the Protestant political establishment and took it over by convincing unionists that he was the only leader tough enough to take on Sinn Fein. But to do anything with that political capital, the British government requires him to work with his onetime enemies. This one meeting won't wash away centuries of bitterness and strife, but it marks a huge step forward in what has been a painfully slow peace process. The conditions appear to be right for progress to continue.

Potential pitfalls remain. Paisley's DUP and Sinn Fein don't like each other, which will make it difficult to run a government together. And they retain mutually exclusive political goals — Paisley is determined to keep Northern Ireland in the United Kingdom, Adams wants to create a united Ireland. It may be that increasing cooperation across the Irish Sea and the blurring of borders will allow them to claim, much like their seating arrangements, that they're together in different nations.

Still, just outside the Paisley-Adams meeting was a reminder of how much things have changed. A few years ago, unionists — often led by Paisley — protested at the very notion of talking to Sinn Fein. This time the only protesters visible were urging the two men to work together to stop a new system of water bills.