For the first time in decades, British and Irish leaders have hammered out an agreement that offers at least a "framework for peace" in Northern Ireland - if extremists and hard-liners on both sides can stop shooting and bombing each other and sit down to plan their future.
That won't be easy to achieve. The pact doesn't give radicals on either side what they most want. And any further progress depends on establishing a permanent cease-fire between the Irish Republic Army and and pro-British paramilitary groups. Only after a three-month cease-fire to demonstrate good faith will negotiations proceed. Violent acts by disgruntled individuals could easily upset the hoped-for peace.The agreement calls for the people of Protestant-dominated Northern Ireland to be allowed to decide their own future, whether to remain in the United Kingdom or merge with the Catholic-dominated Republic of Ireland. The IRA would stop trying to force unification by violence. The Republic of Ireland would give up claims to the northern counties - claims actually written into the country's constitution.
Some in the IRA are not happy with that prospect. And some hard-liners in Northern Ireland are dismayed that they won't have an ironclad guarantee of remaining under British control.
But for the first time, broad support seems to be coming from all parties. Preliminary negotiations appear to have involved people from various groups, although it would be politically unwise for some of them to admit it publicly. Yet there is a feeling that people are tired of the terrorist violence that has taken more than 3,100 lives in Northern Ireland and 219 more in Britain and the Irish Republic since 1969.
President Clinton is correct in calling it a "historic opportunity," but it remains just that - merely an opportunity, not an accomplished fact.
The difficulties remain are best appreciated by understanding that the violence of the past 25 years has just been the latest phase of an emotional-political-religious conflict stretching over centuries.
The story goes back as far as 1541 when Henry VIII of England forced Ireland's parliament to declare him king of Ireland. Subsequent revolts were repeatedly crushed by British power and in wars between Catholic and Protestant kings in the 17th century. Protestant settlers were encouraged in the north.
The bitterness remained even after the Irish Free State was formed in 1921 without the Protestant-ruled nine counties of Northern Ireland. The IRA has carried out a terrorism campaign in behalf of a united Ireland and against British troops in the northern counties and elsewhere.
Protestants fearing Catholic majority rule have stifled civil rights of Catholics in the north. And radicals of all stripes have murdered innocent peoples of both faiths in cycles of violence and revenge.
Centuries of such conflict have left a deep legacy of bitterness that won't be easy to erase. But the agreement worked out this week offers the best hope in a long time for a peaceful future. It would be tragic for it to slip away because of a few violent nihilists who insist on all or nothing.