Are "the troubles" over? Hopes are high that an agreement between Catholic and Protestant leaders in Northern Ireland will bring years of hostility and violence to an end.

• Author: Quinn, Eamon
• Position: INTERNATIONAL

For the last three decades, Northern Ireland has been torn apart by sectarian violence between Catholics and Protestants. But a landmark agreement reached in March may finally end the conflict.

Under the terms of the deal, Britain will hand back responsibility for running many of Northern Ireland's internal affairs to a local administration composed of Protestants and Catholics. Northern Ireland will, how ever, remain a province of the United Kingdom for the foreseeable future.

"The word historic has to be used," says Brian Feeney, a historian at St, Mary's University College in Belfast.

It is hoped that the new power-sharing government will end a 30-year cycle of sectarian violence known as "the troubles." More than 3,700 people, including many civilians, have been killed by bombings, shootings, and other acts of violence carried out by paramilitary groups on both sides.

The agreement was welcome news in the U.S., where more than 34 million Americans have Irish ancestry.

"Peace and prosperity are the best possible outcome for Northern Ireland," says Christopher Cahill of Pace University's Institute for American Irish Studies in New York, "and the American-Irish role in promoting that idea has been significant."

500 YEARS OF TENSIONS

Tensions between Catholics and Protestants in Ireland date from the early 16th century, when Catholic Ireland was brought under the rule of Protestant England during the reign Of King Henry VIII. In the early 17th century, British policy encouraged working-class Protestants (mostly from Scotland) to settle in the north of Ireland, creating a Protestant majority there that exists to this day.

When Ireland won its independence from Great Britain in 1921, the treaty called for the six Protestant-majority counties of the north to remain part of the United Kingdom (see timeline). Most of Northern Ireland's minority Catholic population is suspicious of the Protestant majority and would like to be part of the Republic of Ireland--which is why they're called republicans. Most of the Protestants, however, are determined to remain a part of the U.K., which is why they're known as unionists. (The British government's policy is that the people of Northern Ireland should ultimately decide whether they remain part of the U.K. or unite with Ireland.)

This is the fundamental conflict that underlies "the troubles," the cycle of violence that erupted in the late 1960s.

CIVILIANS TARGETED

The best known of the paramilitary groups is the provisional wing of the Irish Republican Army (I.R.A.), which began as a group that fought for...