British, Irish Lawmakers Launch Council

Embracing the dreams of Northern Ireland’s peace accord, lawmakers from throughout Britain and Ireland launched a formal partnership Friday that foresees a new millennium built on friendship and close cooperation.

The first meeting of the British-Irish Council was overseen by Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern. It capped a significant few weeks when the long-gridlocked 1998 Good Friday accord finally traveled from paper to reality.

The landmark deal proposed three key institutions that sprang to life this month: a new Protestant-Roman Catholic administration for Northern Ireland; an all-Ireland council linking that power-sharing Cabinet with its counterpart in the Irish Republic; and Friday’s first assembly of legislators from the Irish Republic and all of the United Kingdom.

On a day already filled with symbolism, Blair offered his first public handshake to a member of Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army-linked party that now is a member of the administration in Belfast, Northern Ireland’s capital.

Blair said his welcome for Bairbre de Brun, Northern Ireland’s minister for health, reflected increasing normalcy in extraordinary times.

Friday’s talks established that all eight participating legislatures in the council--the British and Irish parliaments, the new assemblies in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, and the semiautonomous parliaments on the Isle of Man and the islands of Guernsey and Jersey--would meet in their respective capitals every six months.