Ireland stood today on the brink of an historic peace settlement after Ulster Unionists and the nationalist SDLP struck a vital deal.Good Friday could go into the history books as the day when decades of bloody conflict in Ulster came to an end.

Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern worked past the midnight deadline as all sides engaged in a frenetic round of talks at Castle Buildings, Stormont.

Sources close to the Unionists and SDLP said they had struck a deal centring on a new power sharing executive, embracing safeguards for both communities, which would head a new Belfast assembly.

The Progressive Unionist Party's David Ervine said: "Something amazing is happening. It is genuinely a golden and a new opportunity. What we are talking about here is something as monumental as the collapse of the Berlin Wall.

"I have to pinch myself. I never thought in my lifetime I would see it."

But it seemed unlikely that Sinn Fein would be prepared to sign up at this stage, because of its apparent dissatisfaction with the proposals for North-South bodies, which it believed fell short of its demands for greater powers.

National chairman Mitchel McLaughlin said they would not walk out of the talks, but at the same time he signalled they were unlikely to endorse the terms.

In North Yorkshire, families who have experienced at first-hand the consequences of the Irish troubles gave only a very cautious welcome to the peace deal, and told of their fears for the future.

Rita Restorick, whose 23-year-old son Stephen was stationed at Topcliffe near Thirsk, and was the last soldier to be killed by the IRA in Northern Ireland, said she feared arguments over cross border bodies will once again cause any peace deal to founder.

"I am hoping for a lasting peace but the situation is fraught," said Mrs Restorick.

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