No peace yet in N. Ireland Both sides treading carefully as Catholics near political majority, and Protestants try to hang on

Gerard Lawlor was a teenager walking home from his pub one night,only 100 yards from his home in a Catholic neighborhood in Belfast.Perhaps he was thinking of his baby son and the baby's mother forwhom he hoped to find a home. Perhaps he was even dreaming of aneventual marriage. There was but one reality that would ruin hisdream: He was wearing the jersey of the Celtics, the Catholicfootball club in Glasgow (as opposed to the Protestant Rangers), as akid in Chicago would wear a Sox jersey. For this crime he wasmurdered by a gang of passing Protestants calling themselves "The RedHand." His mother begged that there be no retaliation for this, thefirst murder in Northern Ireland in …