But the assembly's political good will is being tested by new terrorist threats. British police are investigating a bomb blast that damaged a London bridge last week. No group has claimed responsibility, but police suspect republican extremists opposed to the peace process. Gerry Adams, who heads the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, says it is time to stop the violence on both sides. Northern Ireland's power-sharing assembly has to deal with implementation of the 1998 peace agreement, which ended 30 years of sectarian violence.
Disagreements continue over several aspects of the arrangement.
Unionists, for one, protest proposed reforms that would eliminate British symbols from Northern Ireland's police force. The fragility of the power sharing arrangement was highlighted in the first parliamentary session when hard-line unionists demanded the government's two republican ministers be forced to fly the British flag over their office buildings, something they both refused to do last week on the anniversary of Queen Elizabeth's coronation.