Give Peace a Chance.(Northern Ireland peace prospects)(Brief Article)

Two Northern Irelands were in the news last week. Dominating the front pages: the battered peace process, forever caught in the punch-up between good news and bad. Back on the business pages, a different story unfolded. A luxury Ramada hotel opened its doors in Belfast--part of a sustained construction boom that belies the city's skewed image as a war zone alight with burning police Land Rovers. Real-estate prices continued to climb, well ahead of inflation; retail rents were rising faster in Belfast than anywhere else in Britain except London. A Confederation of British Industry survey found that Northern Ireland was one of only two places in the United Kingdom that would not lose jobs this year.

Pay attention to those business stories. For all the hand-wringing about disarmament and the fate of their elected Assembly, which was temporarily suspended last weekend, the people of Northern Ireland have mostly moved beyond the Troubles that consumed them for nearly three decades. There is enough tension and hatred to bring back the worst of times if enough things go wrong. Yet even Ulster's pessimists don't expect that to happen. The institutions born of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, like the Assembly, are still young and fragile. The popular desire for peace is not.

The Northern Ireland Assembly has been rickety since day one. In 1999, on what might have been its very first day of official business, it fell apart in less than three hours. The biggest political party, the Ulster Unionists, led by David Trimble, simply failed to show up. (The issue: IRA disarmament.) Once up and running, the Assembly was then suspended in February 2000 for four months. (The issue: disarmament.) And yet support for the 1998 agreement has barely flagged: 71 percent voted for it then; 66 percent support it now.

Life behind the headlines in Northern Ireland shows a society struggling for normality--and coming reasonably close. Educational standards are higher in Ulster than in the rest of the United Kingdom. Hospital waiting lists are ...