Northern Ireland

David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party in Northern Ireland and co-winner of this year's Nobel Prize for Peace, gave these remarks in Belfast on Sept. 3, at a ceremony attended by President Clinton. Mr. President, when you last visited us, you said to the men of violence here that their day was over, that there was no room for guns at democracy's table. There is no justification for violence. There never has been. . . . Mr. President, the path ahead is for true democrats only.

In two more weeks the so-called marching season will be officially over in Northern Ireland, leaving damages of over a quarter-billion dollars in the roiling wake of its violence. Will anything have been learned from the experience? The British government, which rules the partitioned six-county statelet, hopes so. In a reflex typical of governments everywhere, it has named Dr. Peter North, Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, to "study the problem and prepare a report.

To those who gathered Thursday night at Holy Family College to honor him, Bishop Cahal B. Daly is a peacemaker. To the Irish National Caucus, an American group that issued a press release blasting him for his visit to this country, he is a troublemaker. Those conflicting views reflect life in civil war-torn Northern Ireland, a place where many Catholics and Protestants see right and wrong as black and white. Or perhaps green and orange. "But there is no such thing as green tears or orange tears.

Tension continued to boil in Northern Ireland yesterday with sporadic hijackings, gas bombings and shooting incidents in the third straight day of violence over Protestant marches. In Newry, a border city about 40 miles south of Belfast, armed masked men cleared a train of passengers before setting it on fire. It was the second train burned in three days. Al cross-border train service with the Irish Republic has been suspended. There is growing fear a second round of Protestant marches on Saturday could push events over the brink, triggering full-scale paramilitary violence.

Talks on the future of Northern Ireland collapsed yesterday, ending what was once hailed as the best chance in a generation to find a political solution to the province's violent conflicts. The talks, which had nearly expired on numerous occasions in recent weeks, were put to rest by the man whose handiwork they were, Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Brooke. But the cause of the collapse appeared to be the unwillingness of Ulster's Protestant political parties to let the Republic of Ireland play any significant role in the province's political future.

As an 18-year-old from West Belfast, I interviewed for a job with a large insurance company. I was subsequently told by the firm's manager that, although I was the best applicant, he could not hire me because I was a Catholic. Currently, I lead the Alliance Party, the only nonsectarian political party in Northern Ireland. Its 10 percent of the popular vote is drawn equally from Catholics and Protestants. One of the party's founding principles was and remains a pledge to root out injustice and discrimination in our society.

A gang of masked men carrying axes and cudgels terrorized Roman Catholics in a pre-dawn attack in the normally peaceful village of Rasharkin in Country Antrim yesterday. The raid was one of the worst incidents in a series of street skirmishes and sectarian clashes that started Friday night, the eve of a major Protestant celebration that marks the victory of Protestant King William of Orange over Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne in 1609. In Rasharkin, masked vandals toting cudgels, pickax handles and axes set upon 12 homes before dawn, wrecked five cars and injured a 16-year-old youth trying to defend himself, police said.

After graduating from Yale Law School, Thomas Patrick Foley spent two years in Northern Ireland serving as volunteer legal counsel to the Peace People, a Nobel Peace Prize-winning group dedicated to easing tensions in that war- ravaged province. In his new position as executive deputy secretary in the Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry, Foley, a Flourtown native, will be a key figure in trying to keep peace between workers and management in the state. Foley, who began working at his new post Monday, said he was looking forward to the challenge of carrying out Gov. Casey's Pennsylvania Partnership campaign.

The worst bombing in Northern Ireland's modern history yesterday killed at least 28 people, including an 18-month-old child, in a crowded market town 70 miles west of Belfast. Hospital officials said 220 were injured, 10 critically, in the attack at Omagh, County Tyrone, which occurred in midafternoon in the center of the mixed Catholic and Protestant town on its busiest shopping day. Police suggested that a warning call to the British Broadcasting Corp. newsroom in Belfast 40 minutes before the explosion may have been designed to lead civilians to the bombing site.

The speaker's voice carried the lilt of the Emerald Isle, a rhythmic flow of words that riveted the attention of the group of more than 40 men and women of all ages at the Cinnaminson Public Library. But her talk did not call to mind shades of green fields or bright-eyed, freckle-faced children. When Noelle Ryan of Belfast addressed the members of the Irish American Unity Conference South Jersey Chapter on May 13 it was about prisons and extradition and politicians. It was an update on the "troubles" in Northern Ireland.

Over the centuries, the Irish have dispersed like clover in the wind, alighting in lands far from their native soil. This year, the Emerald Isle is calling them back to their roots. The Gathering, launched last year by government officials, is an extended family reunion of Ireland's diaspora. (Quick migration lesson: 70 million people worldwide claim Irish lineage, including 40 million in the United States.) More than 3,000 activities, held throughout the year in all 32 counties, including a few in Northern Ireland, salute the pillars of Irish culture: art, music, literature, food, drink, sports, community, and camaraderie.

Genocide charges denied GUATEMALA CITY - Former Guatemalan dictator Efrain Rios Montt, 86, denied Thursday that he ordered the extermination of Ixil Mayas as he testified for the first time at his genocide trial. The former general said prosecutors haven't proven his participation in the killings. "I declared myself innocent," Rios Montt told the three-judge tribunal as many in the audience applauded. "It was never my intention or my goal to destroy a whole ethnic group. " Rios Montt seized power in a March 1982 coup and was overthrown just over a year later.

COMBATIVE and determined to get her way, Margaret Thatcher divided opinion down the middle in life - and in death. Many leaders lauded Thatcher, 87, for her steely determination to modernize Britain's industrial landscape, even at the cost of strikes and riots, and to stand beside the United States as the West triumphed in the Cold War vs. the Soviet Union. Others saw a pitiless tyrant who preferred conflict to compromise. British Prime Minister David Cameron lauded his 1980s predecessor as "a great Briton," but others - particularly Europe's socialists who often clashed with her - were less enamored in their reactions to the death Monday of the conservative icon.

It was the usual for the tightly knit Irish and Irish- American community in the area - tragedy strikes, the phones ring, and fund-raising begins. This time, it was for Charlie Dunlop of Havertown. The 46-year-old electrician, who had emigrated from Northern Ireland, dropped dead in his kitchen. His wife and young son walked in to find Dunlop sprawled on the floor. For many in the Irish community and beyond, Charlie Dunlop's death more than a year ago felt like a direct hit. The cliche seemed to fit - everybody knew Charlie.

The seven Catholic schools that have decided to leave the Big East and form their own league continued to plot the future, retaining Proskauer Rose L.L.P. and Pilson Communications Inc., to aid in their defection. St. John's, Georgetown, Marquette, DePaul, Seton Hall, Providence and Villanova all decided last month to set off on their own as the Big East continues to reshape itself. GOLF: Rory McIlroy said he may skip the 2016 Olympics because of the dilemma over which country to represent.

DUBLIN, Ireland - Northern Ireland leaders appealed for calm Thursday after Protestant militants attacked offices and a home connected to the most compromise-minded political party over its support for reducing the display of British flags on government buildings. The overnight violence in two Belfast suburbs came on the eve of Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's planned visit Friday to the capital of the British territory. It underscored how divided Northern Ireland remains despite the broad success of a peace process that has stopped paramilitary violence but done little to bring down barriers between rival British Protestant and Irish Catholic communities.

SEAN O'NEILL JR. has gotten into a lifetime's worth of legal trouble in his 23 years, and now authorities confirm that he's skipped probation and fled to the Emerald Isle to join his dear deported dad. The younger O'Neill first made headlines in 2006, when he killed his friend while drunkenly playing with a gun at age 17. Then his father, a Northern Ireland native, was found guilty of citizenship, firearms and tax crimes, and deported to...

BELFAST, Northern Ireland - The first abortion clinic on the island of Ireland opened Thursday in Belfast, sparking protests by conservatives from both the Catholic and Protestant sides of Northern Ireland. The Marie Stopes family planning center will offer the abortion pill to women who are less than nine weeks pregnant - but only if doctors determine they are at risk of death or long-term health damage from their pregnancy. That's the law in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, where abortion is otherwise illegal.