Marching Toward Civility; Bitter enemies in Northern Ireland finally share a common goal: a government.

Byline: Stryker McGuire (With Liat Radcliffe in London and Barry White in Belfast)

The summer "marching season" is one of those Northern Ireland tribal rituals that mystify outsiders. Throughout July the Orange Order, a Protestant fraternal organization, sponsors dozens of marches celebrating, among other things, unionism and victories in battle over Roman Catholic enemies. In recent years the most notorious march has been the one up to the tiny hilltop church at Drumcree. Its traditional return route takes the Orangemen through what is now a Catholic neighborhood in Portadown. In 1997 the marchers' perceived triumphalism enraged Catholic republicans and triggered three days of mayhem. One man, a Protestant, killed himself as he dismantled a bomb of his own making.

This year Drumcree was a different story. Downhill from the church, the Police Service of Northern Ireland--formerly known as the Royal Ulster Constabulary, Europe's most heavily armed police force--erected a relatively modest barricade to cut off the Orangemen's route through Catholic areas. For their part, the Orangemen had put up a cordon of their own in front of the police barrier--a single strand of rope with a warning sign to their marchers: please do not pass this point. Dark-suited, bowler-hatted loyalists marched down to the rope, stopped and politely turned around.

When politicians in Northern Ireland call this the "summer of love," they're only half joking. After a series of setbacks since the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, a constructive calm has settled over Ulster. Sectarian violence has all but vanished. The political situation looks dreadful; for one thing, home rule has been suspended for more than a year and a half. But beneath the surface there's talk that the two leading parties, Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party, will soon reach "the deal of all deals" to get the suspended government up and running again. "They are in a better position to do it now than they ever have been," a source close to British Prime Minister Tony Blair told NEWSWEEK last week.

Such a breakthrough would be the most important political development in Northern Ireland since the peace pact was signed six years ago. The local government made possible under that agreement has been out of business since October 2002, brought down by a republican spy scandal and endless partisan squabbling. London has been running things in the meantime. Members of the Northern Ireland Assembly--MLAs--have embarrassingly little to do for the money they get (during suspension, 70 percent of full pay). In the tomblike quiet of Parliament Buildings outside Belfast, Democratic Unionist MLA Jeffrey Donaldson said last week, "We recognize that you can't go on indefinitely like this."

If a deal is done--a big if--it will be done by Northern Ireland's political extremes. In assembly elections last November, the erstwhile mainstream parties were beaten by the hard-liners--Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army, and the DUP, led by the loyalist, anti-"popery" firebrand Ian Paisley. Once ...