The first steps on the historic road to the full implementation of the Belfast Agreement have been taken. The preliminary parliamentary procedures have been agreed to facilitate the setting up of a devolved government in Northern Ireland for the first time in a quarter of a century. But the proceedings at Stormont Castle yesterday went further than that. In a momentous political development, they will enable the first government, inclusive of all of the main parties and political traditions in Northern Ireland, to be established later this week.
The initial legal wranglings about the position of Mr Seamus Mallon as deputy First Minister-designate should not take from the history-in-the-making. Ten Ministers have been nominated under the d'Hondt system to form a cross-community cabinet and take responsibility for the governance of Northern Ireland. Besides the First Minister-designate, Mr Trimble, and his nationalist counterpart, Mr Mallon, they include representatives of the polarities of politics over the last thirty troubled years.
Mr Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein's effective spokesman at the International Commission on Decommissioning, is Minister-designate for Education. Ms Bairbre de Brun, the second Sinn Fein nominee, is Minister-designate for Health. Both will work in government with DUP nominees, Mr Peter Robinson, Minister-designate for Regional Development, and Mr Nigel Dodds, Minister-designate for Social Development. There were some surprises too among the nominations. Mr Sam Foster, instead of Mr Dermot Nesbitt, was Mr Trimble's nominee as Minister-designate for the Environment. Ms Brid Rodgers of the SDLP is Minister-designate for Agriculture.
A number of equally significant events will flow from the nomination of an inclusive government yesterday. The British Government's order devolving powers to the new institutions - the Assembly, the Executive and the North/South bodies - will be tabled in the House of Commons today and signed into effect by the Queen tomorrow night. The Northern Ireland Secretary, Mr Peter Mandelson, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr David Andrews, will sign a new British-Irish Agreement in Iveagh House on Thursday to replace the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985. This ceremony will be followed by a special Government meeting to amend Articles 2 and 3 of the Constitution. The process of establishing the North/South Ministerial Council - the first formal all-Ireland link since partition - and the six implementation bodies will begin.
The first meeting of the devolved Northern Ireland Executive will take place on Thursday. The IRA is scheduled around the same time to announce the appointment of an interlocuter to General John de Chastelain's decommissioning body.
It has taken 18 months to advance to the point reached yesterday: the nomination of an Executive comprising members of the UUP, DUP, SDLP and Sinn Fein. Their mandate in concurrent referendums, North and South, last year is to restore normal politics to Northern Ireland. The implementation of the Belfast Agreement is beginning to happen.