March 27, 2007
Op-Ed Columnist
You, Too, Can Be a Banker to the Poor

By NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF
KABUL, Afghanistan

For those readers who ask me what they can do to help fight poverty, one option is to sit down at your computer and become a microfinancier.

That’s what I did recently. From my laptop in New York, I lent $25 each to the owner of a TV repair shop in Afghanistan, a baker in Afghanistan, and a single mother running a clothing shop in the Dominican Republic. I did this through www.kiva.org, a Web site that provides information about entrepreneurs in poor countries — their photos, loan proposals and credit history — and allows people to make direct loans to them.

So on my arrival here in Afghanistan, I visited my new business partners to see how they were doing.

On a muddy street in Kabul, Abdul Satar, a bushy-bearded man of 64, was sitting in the window of his bakery selling loaves for 12 cents each. He was astonished when I introduced myself as his banker, but he allowed me to analyze his business plan by sampling his bread: It was delicious.

Mr. Abdul Satar had borrowed a total of $425 from a variety of lenders on Kiva.org, who besides me included Nathan in San Francisco, David in Rochester, N.Y., Sarah in Waltham, Mass., Nate in Fort Collins, Colo.; Cindy in Houston, and “Emily’s family” in Santa Barbara, Calif.

With the loan, Mr. Abdul Satar opened a second bakery nearby, with four employees, and he now benefits from economies of scale when he buys flour and firewood for his oven. “If you come back in 10 years, maybe I will have six more bakeries,” he said.

Mr. Abdul Satar said he didn’t know what the Internet was, and he had certainly never been online. But Kiva works with a local lender affiliated with Mercy Corps, and that group finds borrowers and vets them.

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The local group, Ariana Financial Services, has only Afghan employees and is run by Storai Sadat, a dynamic young woman who was in her second year of medical school when the Taliban came to power and ended education for women. She ended up working for Mercy Corps and becoming a first-rate financier; some day she may take over Citigroup.

“Being a finance person is better than being a doctor,” Ms. Sadat said. “You can cure the whole family, not just one person. And it’s good medicine — you can see them get better day by day.”

Small loans to entrepreneurs are now widely recognized as an important tool against poverty. Muhammad Yunus won the Nobel Peace Prize last year for his pioneering work with microfinance in Bangladesh.

In poor countries, commercial money lenders routinely charge interest rates of several hundred percent per year. Thus people tend to borrow for health emergencies rather than to finance a new business. And partly because poor people tend to have no access to banks, they also often can’t save money securely.

Microfinance institutions typically focusing on lending to women, to give them more status and more opportunities. Ms. Sadat’s group does lend mostly to women, but it’s been difficult to connect some female borrowers with donors on Kiva — because many Afghans would be horrified at the thought of taking a woman’s photograph, let alone posting on the Internet.

My other partner in Kabul is Abdul Saboor, who runs a small TV repair business. He used the loan to open a second shop, employing two people, and to increase his inventory of spare parts. “I used to have to go to the market every day to buy parts,” he said, adding that it was a two-and-a-half-hour round trip. “Now I go once every two weeks.”

Web sites like Kiva are useful partly because they connect the donor directly to the beneficiary, without going through a bureaucratic and expensive layer of aid groups in between. Another terrific Web site in this area is www.globalgiving.com, which connects donors to would-be recipients. The main difference is that GlobalGiving is for donations, while Kiva is for loans.

A young American couple, Matthew and Jessica Flannery, founded Kiva after they worked in Africa and realized that a major impediment to economic development was the unavailability of credit at any reasonable cost.

“I believe the real solutions to poverty alleviation hinge on bringing capitalism and business to areas where there wasn’t business or where it wasn’t efficient,” Mr. Flannery said. He added: “This doesn’t have to be charity. You can partner with someone who’s halfway around the world.”

You are invited to comment on this column at Mr. Kristof’s blog, www.nytimes.com/ontheground.

Go stranger and tell the Laecedaemonians

By LARRY STIRLING
Monday, March 26, 2007

The Iranian government has protested the box-office hit "300" mischaracterizes "Persians," the historic name for Iranians.

The film is an only faintly accurate portrayal of the ancient battle of Thermopylae (480 B.C.) wherein the reputation of the warrior Spartans was sealed for history.

The pass at Thermopylae was where an alliance of some Greek city-states decided to make a stand against the most recent invasion by the "Persians" under the command of one Xerxes. The Persians came in a force estimated (by the Greeks) at 2 million.

An otherwise unstoppable military corps, the narrow Thermopylae pass gave Greeks their only hope of slowing the Persians while other Greeks gathered into a sizeable army and mobilized the Athenian navy.

Things went well for the Greeks until they were betrayed by one of John Kerry's ancestors named Ephialtes, who helped the Persians find their way around the pass. Ephialtes didn't get a chance to run for president.

When the Greek position became untenable, the Spartan king Leonidas told the rest of the Greeks to retreat, and that he and his "300"
(backed up by 700 Thespians who never get any credit) would hold the pass for as long as possible.

When the inevitable occurred, the Greeks, as did the Texans after the Battle of the Alamo, accumulated a call to arms against the Persians: "Remember the Thespians!" Nah.

What did come to us from that battle is an epitaph -- one that appears on the police officers' memorial in our state Capitol. Just down the hall from the governor's office can be found a book containing the hand-written names of California police officers killed in the line of duty.

Above the book is the a passage, which reads movingly:

"Go stranger, tell the Lacedaemonians that we lie here in obedience to their laws."

(Lacedaemonia was the territory that Sparta ruled at the time.)

I give the producers credit for addressing an important historic incident and for successfully conveying the source of Sparta's "rep." To this day, the adjective "Spartan" means tough, strong and warrior-like. The Thespians lost out because their name got confused with the supposed first actor named Thespus, from whom that profession takes its trade name.

My first reaction to the Iranians modern-day sensitivity was that it would be impossible to adequately demonize the policies of the current Iranian government.

Their "mullaocracy," in violation of all international law and norms of civilized behavior, grabbed our embassy and held several hundred diplomatic staff hostage for more than a year while domestic wild rabbits were terrorizing Jimmy Carter.

They also regularly hold huge demonstrations that inevitably feature the chant "Death to America." Plus, they act as the main forward support base for creating charnel house for innocent Iraqi citizens.

What moral grounds could they possibly stand on?

Then I went to see the movie.

Sorry, but here the Iranians have a point. There is nothing accurate about the movie save possibly the number of Spartans who were supposedly involved and their final demise.

Ultimately, the "300" is nothing more than, as one critic called it, "an uber-violent boys film." In short, a snuff flick; it is, however, a box-office hit.

Some people, living safe, boring lives that are blessedly exempt from the carnage that is reported daily through the 9-1-1 system, find it interesting to see an endless stream of warriors disemboweled or decapitated. I do not.

I understand it is "entertainment." And ultimately entertainers have no moral obligations whatsoever and no legal obligation other than to make money.

But just because movie moguls can make a profit at the expense of their viewer's credulity doesn't mean they should. Movies incrementally add to or detract from our nation's moral resources.

By far, the most egregious and galling error in the film is the very notion that Sparta stood for "freedom." The Spartan skill set was nothing more or less than "warrioring." They lived solely by fine-tuning all of their young men into killers who could be admitted to a warriors "mess" only after extensive military and endurance training and a period of roaming Greece murdering people for a living. Sound familiar?

Sparta was a parasitic society living off of the work and talent of others. In order to survive, its members had to subjugate other Greeks. They created no art, literature or music. They contributed nothing to western civilization of lasting import.

The ultimate struggle for the soul of Greece did not end with the defeat of Xerxes' horde. That was resolved during "A War Like No Other" (author: Victor Hanson) between Sparta and Athens.

Contrary to Sparta, Athens did contribute refined democracy, free trade, literature, philosophy and much more to western civilization. But it lost that war.

Therein is a lesson for us.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

Stirling is a retired judge who authored the book "Leading at a Higher Level." He is a former Army officer, member of the San Diego City Council, the California State Assembly and the State Senate. Send comments to larry.stirling@sddt.com. Comments may be published as letters to the Editor.

Assyrian Genocide Conference At the European Parliament

GMT 3-26-2007 23:33:15
Assyrian International News Agency
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The Ottoman Empire's widespread persecution of Assyrian civilians during World War I constituted a form of genocide, the present-day term for an attempt to destroy a national, ethnic or religious group, in whole or in part. Ottoman soldiers and their Kurdish and Persian militia partners subjected hundreds of thousands of Assyrians to a deliberate and systematic campaign of massacre, torture, abduction, deportation, impoverishment and cultural and ethnic destruction.

Up to now, the international community has been hesitant to recognize the Assyrian experience as a form of genocide. However, the Assyrian genocide is indistinguishable in form from its Armenian counterpart. Both are narrowly intertwined.

My presentation will deal with the debate about the genocide issue on the Belgian scene in the form that it has explicitly taken, the Armenian genocide, and implicitly and indirectly the Assyrian genocide, Seyfo. My analysis will identify a number of negationist actors in Belgium, highlight their objectives and their strategies, their links with Belgian political parties, with the Turkish embassy in Brussels and with not very commendable organizations in Turkey.

The Belgian State and the Ottoman Genocide

In 1998, the Belgian senate recognized the genocide committed by the Ottomans against the Armenians during WW I.

On June 6, 2005, the Justice Commission of the Belgian Senate rejected a draft bill (Ref. 51/ 1284) meant to extend the March 23, 1995 law criminalizing the negationism of the Nazi genocide against the Jews to all the genocides and crimes against humanity legally recognized.

The issue of the Armenian genocide which was recognized by all the parties was sneaked in during the debate, especially by the MRAX (Movement against Racism, Anti-Semitism and Xenophobia), but was excluded from the draft law because it had not been recognized by an international jurisdiction. The draft bill extending the criminalization of negationism divided the parties in power and was finally rejected with twelve 'no' votes to two 'yes' votes. If it had been approved in Parliament, Belgium would have been the first country to punish those who deny the Armenian genocide allegations.

Revisionist and Negationist Players in Belgium

Several Turkish nationalist organizations based and operating in Belgium but linked to sister-organizations based in Turkey are opposed to the qualification of genocide attributed to the mass-scale massacres of Armenians during WWI and even deny the very existence of such massacres.

The Association of Ataturk's Philosophy in Belgium/ Association de la Pensée d'Ataturk en Belgique (APAB-BADD) is a non-profit association linked to the Turkish Labor Party, a nationalist maoist party which is hostile to the United States and to the European Union. It receives public subsidies.

EYAD/ The House of Turkey is a social association. Strange though it may be, its chairman Metin Edeer is also a member of the municipal council of the Turkish town Emirdag (22,000 inhabitants) although he lives in Belgium. He was elected in 2004 on the list of the MHP (Green Wolves), the nationalist extreme-right party in Turkey.

The Turkish Islamic Religious Foundation of Belgium / Fondation religieuse islamique turque de Belgique (FRITB-BTIDV), better known under the name Diyanet whose president is the adviser for social affairs at the Turkish embassy in Brussels, Omer Faruk Turan.

The Belgian-Turkish Coordination Council (CCBT-BTKK), which was created in March 1996, is an umbrella organization for more than ninety Turkish associations. It gathers together nationalist extreme-right movements depending directly from the Turkish embassy in Brussels. Its leader, Kenan Daggun, was sentenced to nine days in prison due to the incidents that took place during the demonstration against the monument erected in memory of the Armenian genocide in Ixelles.

The Sports Federation of the Turks of Belgium/ Fédération sportive des Turcs de Belgique is an organization depending from the Turkish embassy in Brussels.

Yeni Belturk is an association which published a magazine and runs a nationalist and negationist website bearing the same name.

The symbolic target of the revisionist and negationist actors operating on the Belgian territory, and especially in Brussels, is an Armenian monument.

In 1995, the Armenian community in Belgium proposed to the municipal council of Ixelles (Brussels) to erect a monument in memory of the victims of the Armenian genocide at Square Henri Michaux in Ixelles (Brussels) The proposal was unanimously adopted.

Revisionist and Negationist Campaign in Belgium

In March 2003, the Association of Ataturk's Philosophy in Belgium (APAB-BADD) organized a non-authorized demonstration in front of the monument dedicated to the Armenian genocide and spattered it with painting. The police had to intervene and to arrest several demonstrators. Elected members of Turkish descent belonging to several francophone political parties in power supported this campaign.

In the same year, during the campaign for the parliamentary elections, the APAB-BADD and the Belgian-Turkish Coordination Council (BTKK) pressured the mayor of Ixelles to remove the monument commemorating the Armenian genocide.

On May 29, 2004, during the political campaign for regional elections, Turkish extremists held a demonstration in Brussels under the slogan "Reject the assertions of genocide." On this occasion, the Committee for the Coordination of the Turkish Associations claimed the destruction of the Armenian monument in Ixelles. Emir Kir, who was to become State Secretary of the Brussels Parliament in charge of Monuments after those elections participated in the demonstration. It was also the case for a number of Belgian elected candidates of Turkish descent belonging to the Socialist Party, the Liberal Party, the Green, the Democrat and Humanist Centre. Among the participants, it is worth mentioning Afyon Mahmut Koçak, a member of the Turkish Parliament belonging to the party of the Prime Minister, the president of the Turkish Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the mayor of the Turkish town Emirdag and a number of Brussels municipal councilors of Turkish descent.

On December 16, 2004, Yves de Jonghe d'Ardoye addressed a question to the then mayor, Willy Decourty, and the councilors of Ixelles about a demonstration for the demolition of the Armenian monument. The opponents to the Armenian monument raised the issue of the legality of that construction but their attempt was unsuccessful. In his answer, the mayor admitted that Turkish movements had exerted pressure on him to remove the monument but he did not yield to it.

On February 15, 2007, a number of negationist associations organized a conference called "A look at the so-called Armenian genocide" with a controversial guest-speaker, Mr. Yusuf Halaçoglu, President of the Turkish History Foundation. This foundation is not an academic institution but has always served the political agenda of Ataturk and his ideological heirs since its creation in the 1930s. Mr. Halaçoglu is currently prosecuted by Swiss justice on the basis of article 261 bis of the Swiss criminal code pertaining to racial discrimination after he delivered a speech in Winterthur in 2004. Despite these charges, the Socialist mayor of the commune of Saint-Josse (Brussels) failed to prohibit this meeting.

Freedom of Expression and Negationism

Another tactic that was used to try to silence anti-negationist activists was to prosecute them on the grounds of defamation.

In November 2004, State Secretary of the Brussels Regional Parliament Emir Kir (Socialist Party) sued the persons in charge of the website Suffrage Universel who had called him "a negationist, a liar and a delinquent" regarding the issue of the Armenian genocide and his expenses during the last electoral campaign.

In the part of his complaint related to the genocide issue, Emir Kir declared : "It is a fact that the Ottoman Empire ordered the massacre of the Armenian populations and internal displacements (?). This policy can only be unconditionally condemned (?) but I cannot make the next step consisting in affirming that it is a genocide to be assimilated to the genocide of the Jews by the Nazis as long as an independent commission of historians has not qualified these facts."

The defendants were Pierre-Yves Lambert, an independent researcher, and Mehmet Koksal, a journalist of Turkish descent. Both are running the website in their personal capacity.

The trial started on September 14, 2005. Emir Kir was defended by a famous barrister, Marc Uyttendaele, the husband of Minister of Justice, Laurette Onkelinx, who belongs to the Socialist Party.

The King's Procurator Valery de Theux de Meylandt said about the accused that "the incriminated remarks were not off the acceptable limits."

The court decision was released on October 28, 2005. It was 100% in favor of the courageous defendants.

Links Between the Belgian Political Parties and the Revisionist Players

Due to the election system of proportionate representation, the political parties court the various cultural groups of foreign origin heavily present in Belgium, and in particular in Brussels, by putting Belgian citizens of Turkish, Moroccan, Congolese, etc? descent on their election lists to garner as many votes as possible from their respective communities. In the last local elections in Brussels, more than 50% of the candidates of the same political party were sometimes of foreign descent.

The problem is not their origin but the fact that the major political parties have failed to screen them on the basis of a number of legitimate criteria and that they have put extreme-right and extreme-left nationalist candidates on their election lists. A number of them have campaigned in their native language and are said to have held a double language within and without their communities. They have now been elected at various levels of the legislative and executive institutions and some are accused of double allegiance, which is incompatible with the Belgian institutions.

It must also be said that ministers and party leaders have campaigned in the premises of Turkish associations known to be negationist.

Conclusions and Recommendations

The debate around the terminology "genocide" or not is outdated. Those who delay their position on this issue until "an international independent commission of historians is put in place and publicizes its verdict" just do not want to recognize the first genocide of the 20th century. Such a commission exists: it is the international community of historians who throughout the last 90 years have amply demonstrated that a genocide was perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire against the Armenians and the Assyrians during WW I.

The Ottoman genocide of the Armenians and the Ottoman genocide of the Assyrians are the two sides of the same coin. They cannot be separated from each other. They are one and the same genocide.

Our organization "Human Rights Without Frontiers Int'l" recommends

to the Belgian political parties

to recognize that genocide unambiguously

to ask their elected members to recognize it

to screen their candidates for the upcoming parliamentary elections.

to the Belgian elected people of Turkish descent

to have one and sole allegiance: the Belgian state

to the MRAX, the Centre for Equal Opportunities, Armenian, Assyrian and civic organizations

to lodge complaints against negationist statements, conferences and demonstrations on the basis of the legislation prohibiting racism and negationism.

By Willy Fautré
Human Rights Without Frontiers

Copyright (C) 2007, Assyrian International News Agency. All Rights Reserved. Terms of Use.

ITS A DECADE OF UNREST, REDISTRICTING, AND THEN SLOW REUNIFICATION UNDER THE LINES OF ECONOMIC CONNECTIVITY. MUCH LIKE THE BALKANS.

The idea of the Sunni Baathist who held power for so many decades and the Shia coming to some workable relationship is ABSURD under the current ethnic voting lines. I just don't see it happening.

This is a long term process where there will be a migration north that continues with significant intellectual talent (doctors, etc.) are moving to the security of Kurdistan.

The USA should quickly refocus its efforts to the north. I'm sure (at least i hope) there is the contingency plan to camp out in the north with our allies there. The Kurdish Iraqi's are essentially an INDEPENDENT NATION now. They are the beacon to what Iraq can become.
They are not without their own problems, but its a good start.
=======================
March 26, 2007
Departing Envoy to Iraq Says Time Is Running Out

By ALISSA J. RUBIN
BAGHDAD, March 26 — The United States ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, offered a sober assessment of the outlook for the country at his final news conference today.

Although his comments were dressed in the carefully muted language of diplomacy, Mr. Khalilzad’s overall message was that Iraq faced profound troubles and that American patience for helping Iraq deal with those problems was dwindling.

In his opening statement, his most optimistic evaluation was only a little hopeful. “Success,” he said, is “still possible.”

But, he added, “to sustain U.S. support, things have to move at a certain pace.” And, he said, time is running out.

The United States House of Representatives voted last week to call for the withdrawal of American troops by the fall of 2008 and Democratic candidates for president in the next election are promising to drastically reduce the number of American troops in Iraq or to terminate their presence altogether.

Mr. Khalilzad served as ambassador to Iraq for 21 months and oversaw the drafting of the country’s constitution as well as the second nationwide election and a referendum approving the constitution. If, as expected, the United States Senate approves his nomination, Mr. Khalilzad will become ambassador to the United Nations. He will be replaced in Baghdad by Ryan Crocker, a career diplomat, who is currently the ambassador to Pakistan.

While Mr. Khalilzad added that “ultimately Iraq will succeed,” he said that could take a long time. He compared Iraq’s situation to those of Italy, France and Germany as they tried to build their states in preceding centuries. He did not note that it took those countries decades — and in Italy and Germany, some would argue, much of the 19th century, to become integrated nations with working central governments.

He described Iraq as having to survive in a “difficult neighborhood” in which its neighbors did not always have Baghdad’s best interests at heart. Further undermining the country’s prospects and fueling the worsening sectarian strife “is a global terrorist network that’s focused here,” he said.

While Mr. Khalilzad sprinkled his comments with assurances that he was “cautiously optimistic,” he also noted that on each of the important markers of political progress Iraq’s leaders had yet to take crucial steps. Over all, he said, Iraq lacks an agreement among its different religious and ethnic group about what kind of country they want.

That lack of agreement has stymied efforts at reconciliation between those who were loyal to the government of former President Saddam Hussein, who are predominantly Sunni, and the new government, which is predominantly Shiite. It has also hampered the rewriting of the rigid rules used to exclude former members of the Baath party led by Mr. Hussein from government jobs. And it has undercut efforts to rewrite portions of the Iraqi constitution.

The only area on which leaders have made progress is in the approbation of a new law on the ownership of the nation’s oil and the distribution of oil revenues. But even there, the critical implementing legislation has yet to be done, he said.

The greatest risk, according to Mr. Khalilzad comes from the sectarian fighting, which threatens to fracture the society along religious and ethnic lines. “The sectarian violence has been a major negative development, the increase in sectarian violence,” he said.

The area into which he poured the most energy — the involvement of the Sunni Arabs in the political process — has seen modest progress, he said.

Recently, American diplomats and military officials, along with some Iraqis, have reached out to Sunni militants in an effort to woo those elements of the insurgency whom he described as “patriotic” and “reconcilable insurgents” interested in a role in Iraq’s government. Most of these are groups were linked to Mr. Hussein’s former regime rather than to the Sunni religious militants with ties to Al Qaeda.

He said categorically there would be no discussions with individuals linked to Al Qaeda in Mesopotamia.

“ There cannot be reconciliation with Al Qaeda,” he said. “They have to be brought to justice. But there are groups that resisted the democratic change, the change in Iraq. It is our goal to get those groups to be reconciled, to accept, to embrace this new Iraq.”

Although the country remains violent, Mr. Khalilzad noted that in the six weeks since the American-backed security plan began, attacks had dropped 25 percent. Baghdad seemed relatively quiet today. There were several improvised explosive devices, several attacks on police and 15 unidentified bodies were found.

In Hilla, south of Baghdad, three Sunni mosques were attacked in retribution for an attack on a Shiite mosque a three days earlier. In Kirkuk, there were several attacks on police and two suicide truck bombs exploded near Ramadi, but initial reports indicated they had killed only the drivers.

March 26, 2007
Northern Ireland Rivals Reach Deal

By EAMON QUINN and ALAN COWELL
BELFAST, Northern Ireland, March 26 — After years of mutual hostility and recrimination, the leaders of Northern Ireland’s dominant rival groups, Sinn Fein’s Gerry Adams and the Protestant leader, the Rev. Ian Paisley, met today for their first face-to-face talks and agreed to form a joint administration for the province on May 8.

The deal was hailed by Britain and Ireland as a historic breakthrough, more than four years after Northern Ireland’s local government was suspended in October, 2002, after a dispute over espionage activities by the Irish Republican Army.

“The word ‘historic’ has to be used,” said Brian Feeny, a historian at St. Mary’s University College in Belfast, “It was the only way it was ever going to work. The two leaders of the two traditions had to do the deal.”

If implemented, the agreement means Britain will formally hand back responsibility for running many of Northern Ireland’s internal affairs to an administration composed of Protestants and Catholics, with Mr. Paisley, the leader of the biggest party in the province, as First Minister and Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein’s chief negotiator, as his deputy. Other smaller parties will also have seats in the government proportionate to their electoral showing.

“Today the clouds have lifted and people can see their future,” said Peter Hain, Britain’s Northern Ireland minister. British officials depicted the agreement as critically different from many previous false starts because the two main parties had made the deal themselves in direct talks that broke the province’s long-standing taboos on such encounters.

“The first time the two parties have ever met is today,” Prime Minister Tony Blair’s official spokesman, who customarily requests anonymity, told reporters in London. “In the past, it’s been us imposing dates on the parties. The crucial difference today is that this was an agreement reached by the parties themselves.”

The deal was announced by Mr. Adams and Mr. Paisley as they sat close together at a diamond-shaped table in the Stormont Parliament building — a sight that would have seemed impossible in the days when Mr. Paisley labeled Mr. Adams and his followers terrorists because of Sinn Fein’s affiliation with the I.R.A.

Such was Mr. Paisley’s opposition to any kind of settlement with Sinn Fein that he earned the nickname “Doctor No.” He was renowned for railing against the Vatican and what he called “popery,” once labeling the Roman Catholic Church “the mother of harlots and the abomination of the earth.”

While the province’s leaders failed to meet a March 26 deadline set by Britain and Ireland to restore local government, the fact that the two men named a date themselves — and sat together to say so — was taken as what Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain called “a very remarkable coming together of people who, for very obvious reasons, have been strongly opposed in the past.”

Indeed, the sight of the two men, once sworn enemies, sitting feet apart was all the more striking in contrast to the once-familiar images of bloodshed that scarred Northern Ireland for decades. Some 3,720 people died in three decades of sectarian strife known as The Troubles that ended with an I.R.A. ceasefire 10 years ago and the Good Friday peace agreement in 1998.

After reading their statements, Mr. Adams and Mr. Paisley, head of the Democratic Unionist Party, shuffled their papers but did not shake hands. Nonetheless, in prepared statements, they sounded similar, conciliatory themes.

“We are very conscious of the many people who have suffered,” Mr. Adams said. “We owe it to them to build the best possible future. It is a time for generosity, a time to be mindful of the common good and of the future of all our people.”

A few minutes earlier, Mr. Paisley, who had insisted on the delay until May 8, had said: “We must not allow our justified loathing of the horrors and tragedies of the past to become a barrier to creating a better and more stable future. In looking to the future we must never forget those who have suffered during the dark period from which we are, please God, emerging.”

The two men sat in front of a single television camera and one photographer to record Mr. Paisley and Mr. Adams reading their respective scripts. Their meeting took place on the first floor of the Stormont Parliament Buildings, a 1930s structure that was a former symbol of Protestant hegemony in Northern Ireland where the main Good Friday accords were signed in 1998.

At that time, Mr. Paisley’s party rejected the very notion of sharing power with Sinn Fein. In elections five years later, his Democratic Unionists became Northern Ireland’s biggest Protestant party. Since then, in a series of halting negotiations, Mr. Paisley has begrudgingly nudged towards agreement on power-sharing in return for major concessions.

In 2005, the I.R.A. pledged to put its weapons beyond use and to pursue its goals by political means, not armed struggle. Right up until the last few weeks, Mr. Paisley pressed Sinn Fein for further concessions, including acceptance of the province’s policing arrangements, traditionally dominated by Protestants.

At a meeting last October in St. Andrew’s, Scotland, Britain and Ireland laid out a timetable that foresaw the power-sharing administration being revived today. Britain had threatened to restore full direct rule of Northern Ireland if that deadline was not met. But a British official said today: “If there’s a consensus about the way forward the British government isn’t going to stand in the way of that consensus.”

The St Andrew’s agreement also provided for elections earlier this month, in which both Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionists strengthened their positions as the two most powerful parties in the province. The election strengthened Mr. Paisley’s hand against dissidents opposed to the deal within his own party.British officials maintain that the election three weeks ago also represented a demand from Northern Ireland’s 1.6 million people for the rival parties to end their conflicts and concentrate on local issues such as the price of water-supplies, health and education.

“It’s the triumph of normal politics, and we have waited a long time for that,” one British official said, speaking in return for anonymity. In hectic, last-minute negotiations here, the official said, Sinn Fein had agreed to a delay in return for a firm guarantee from the unionists to share power.

In London, Mr. Blair said: “This is a very important day for the people of Northern Ireland, but also for the people and history of these islands. And in a sense, everything we’ve done over the last 10 years has been a preparation for this moment, because the people of Northern Ireland have spoken through the election.”

“They have said they want peace and power-sharing and people working together and the political leadership has come in behind that and said: Well, we’ll deliver what the people want.”

The two sides remain divided in their basic aims, however, with Sinn Fein pressing for a united Ireland and the Democratic Unionists seeking continued links with mainland Britain.

“This won’t stop republicans being any less republican or nationalist, or making unionists less fiercely unionist,” Mr. Blair said. “But what it does mean is that people will come together, respecting each other’s point of view, and share power, make sure politics is only expressed by peaceful and democratic means.”

The agreement is particularly important for Mr. Blair since he plans to step down in the summer and wants to put in place a legacy that will include an agreement on Northern Ireland, ending a conflict whose roots date to the 17th century settlement of north-eastern Ireland by Protestants from Scotland and England. The restoration of Northern Ireland’s local administration would also fulfill an electoral promise to create local government in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

Mr. Adams, whose party is also competing for electoral advantage in the Irish Republic, said today’s agreement “marks the beginning of a new era of politics on this island.”

The two sides said that between now and May 8 they would hold meetings on the details of restoring the power-sharing executive and would jointly press the British government for an improved package of incentives to boost the province’s economy, which is heavily dependent on government subsidies.

Referring to his own party, which is affiliated to the I.R.A., and to Mr. Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party, Mr. Adams said: “There are still many difficulties to be faced but let it be clear — the basis of the agreement between Sinn Fein and the D.U.P. follows Ian Paisley’s unequivocal and welcome commitment to support and participate fully in the political institutions on May 8.”

It is not totally clear why that date has been chosen. It would place the restoration of power-sharing government in Northern Ireland between local elections in Scotland and Wales and a national election expected several weeks later in the Irish Republic. Sinn Fein is also campaigning in that election and may benefit among Irish Republic voters by being seen as a party in the Belfast administration.

Jeffrey Donaldson, who had defected to the Democratic Unionists in opposition to the Good Friday accords, said today’s agreement “is for the next generation. We want to hand on a legacy. I know that the children will not have to endure what people of both sides have suffered.”

Eamon Quinn reported from Belfast and Alan Cowell from London