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CNN Live At Daybreak

Disarmament Will Not Reduce Protestant-Catholic Tensions in Northern Ireland

Aired October 25, 2001 - 05:32   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: Now to northern Ireland. This is another place where peace has been elusive. Now that the Irish Republican Army has said it is working on disarming, the British, have started to dismantle two watch towers along the northern Ireland border.

But as Mark Webster now tells us, tensions between Protestants and Catholics are still simmering.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

MARK WEBSTER, ITN CORRESPONDENT: Here was the ugly reality of daily life in one small part of Belfast. British soldiers, who the Republican leadership would like to see out of the Province altogether, guarding Catholic children to school through a Protestant area.

It's been the same scene for two months and Helen, a Protestant mother with a nine-year old daughter says no one understands how bad it's been for them.

WEBSTER: Do you think the IRA move on this mission will make any difference at all?

HELEN: Not a heap of a difference and anybody on the street will tell you that the IRA will not do away with anything that's any good to them.

WEBSTER: Catholic parents broadly welcome the IRA concession, but agree it will do nothing to lessen the bitterness here. For Kate and her 10-year-old daughter, the daily walk will continue.

KATE: All I can speak for is my children, for their right to (UNINTELLIGIBLE) for education.

WEBSTER: But peace has brought a dividend. In Belfast's bustling center, young people can enjoy a style of life, which has largely been taken for granted elsewhere in the U.K.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I'm really not pro-Protestant, pro- Catholic, or anything. Just pro-peace. I think a lot of people in Northern Ireland are. I think peace is the way forward and decommissioning is a good step. WEBSTER: In north Belfast, further evidence of the simmering tensions between the communities. Removing guns will be hard. Reducing hatred, much harder.

Mark Webster, ITN, Belfast.

(END VIDEOTAPE).

KAGAN: So another area of the world is caught in the power struggle between nuclear neighbors.

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