The Foreign Service Journal, September 2007

make commitments. Implementation of those pledges must be monitored, and outside observers may be needed to ensure impartial judgments. Extremists must not be allowed to derail the peace process. Some irreconcilables will try very hard to block change, and both sides ought to expect this. The partners must be prepared to stay with the negotiating process, no matter how tempting the short-term political benefits of walk- ing out. The 1998 bomb in Omagh that killed 29 people shopping on a Saturday morning was intended to make the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement — just concluded and endorsed strongly in referendums in Northern Ireland and in the Re- public of Ireland — impossible to implement. Wise leaders and the people of Northern Ireland did not let this happen. It is essential to explain early on to supporters that compromise will be necessary if there is to be an end to conflict. This may even mean accepting that one’s own side may have been wrong at times on some issues. And it may entail giving up something that one can live with- out in order to keep something that is critical. Like so much else in the peace process, the necessity of such trade-offs requires courage and leadership. Perhaps the most important lesson of all is simply to think the unthink- able: peace is possible. The sooner those engaged in sectarian or ethnic conflict recognize this, the better! S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 55 Extremists must not be allowed to derail the peace process.