The talks, chaired by the former US senator George Mitchell, ran past their deadline into the evening of Good Friday. The deal created a power-sharing assembly and executive for Northern Ireland, new bodies linking north and south and Britain and Ireland, and a path to release paramilitary prisoners and disarm armed groups. It recognized that Northern Ireland would stay in the United Kingdom unless a majority voted otherwise. Voters in both parts of Ireland approved it in referendums that May.
The Troubles had killed more than 3,500 people since the late 1960s. By the mid-1990s, ceasefires by the IRA and loyalist groups had opened the way for negotiations at Stormont in Belfast. George Mitchell set a deadline of midnight on April 9, 1998, and the final days became a marathon. Tony Blair, the British prime minister, arrived saying he felt "the hand of history" on his shoulder; Bertie Ahern, the Irish taoiseach, flew back and forth to Dublin for his mother's funeral during the talks.
The deadline passed, but at about 5:30 p.m. on April 10, Good Friday, Mitchell announced that agreement had been reached. The Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble had secured enough of his party's support only minutes earlier. The Democratic Unionist Party of Ian Paisley rejected the deal.
On May 22, 71 percent of voters in Northern Ireland and 94 percent in the Republic approved the agreement, and Ireland dropped its constitutional claim to the North. That autumn, John Hume and David Trimble received the Nobel Peace Prize. Power-sharing has since collapsed and been restored several times, but the large-scale violence did not return.
Key people: Tony Blair, Bertie Ahern, George Mitchell, David Trimble, John Hume