DUBLIN-Clerics and sports figures are among members of a new body unveiled by Britain on Friday to work out a strategy for community reconciliation in Northern Ireland after 30 years of sectarian strife.
The consultative group was presented as a follow-up to May's political breakthrough when Protestant and Roman Catholic politicians in the British province, arch-foes for three decades, entered a new power-sharing government.
About 3,600 people died in the violent years that became known as 'The Troubles', shattering families and dividing friends. Tensions persist despite political progress. Police have established a team to delve into thousands of killings left unsolved from the conflict, though many are likely to remain unresolved.
Britain's minister in the province, Peter Hain, said creation of the group, that will canvass views across Northern Ireland, meant it was now possible to ask people there how best to address the past "in a way that heals rather than poisons".
"There's a great deal at stake-nothing less than the future itself," Hain, a former anti-apartheid campaigner, wrote in the London Times on Friday.
South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which probed apartheid era crimes, is one model that will be explored and has been mooted in the past by Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern and Northern Ireland's police chief.
The TRC encouraged disclosure of incidents and violence during apartheid by getting the participants to testify to a tribunal. Those guilty of violence were able to request freedom from prosecution.
The consultative group will be chaired by Lord Robin Eames, former Anglican Archbishop of Armagh, and Denis Bradley, former vice chairman of Northern Ireland 's Policing Board.
It will also include former rugby and Gaelic football stars Willie John McBride and Jarlath Burns as well as academics and community workers and will present a report to Hain in 2008.
Ahern said the panel's creation was an important step.
"It is right that we think again about how we try and address the human legacy of an appalling conflict," said Ahern, who played a pivotal role in brokering a 1998 peace deal in Northern Ireland that largely ended three decades of bloodshed.
Eames said the new group would consult widely. "Some people think this is going to be the Truth and Reconciliation Commission like South Africa," Eames told The Irish Times.
"But that is not what we are about. We may recommend that if that's what people want."
Some in Northern Ireland, such as police chief Hugh Orde, have said the South African model may be one way out of an endless cycle of expensive official enquiries that often do not bring closure to families.
Alan McBride, whose wife was killed by an Irish Republican Army bomb, questioned whether a truth commission would work.
"I just don't know what kind of carrot you can dangle in front of people to get them to come forward and tell the truth," he told RTE Radio.
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