I AM back in Belfast for the first time in three years and it has been a strange, almost surreal experience. For a start, I am used to armed police stopping and searching cars at security checkpoints here but, in the past, they were looking for Semtex explosives or guns. This time, the threat is not terrorism but foot-and-mouth disease.

Uniformed officers are confiscating meat and dairy produce - from ham sandwiches to flasks of milky tea - coming into the North. Guiltily, I handed over Cheestring snacks and we promised to wash our clothes and shower when we reached our destination.

The last time I stayed in Belfast, the peace process was in its infancy. Then, the city was in the throes of major regeneration. People were full of hope and optimism.

Now, the city centre looks more spectacular than ever, with scores of modern, new buildings - concert halls, museums, cinemas and hotels - along the waterfront.

But, amid all the hope to which everyone is still desperately clinging, and beneath the popular, but superficial, image of an upbeat, cosmopolitan city celebrating the peace, lie the remnants of a divided community, still very much at war with itself.

In our hotel, I flicked through a copy of the glossy Ulster Tatler. An incongruous photograph of smiling Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams appeared on the society pages alongside women in ball gowns and men in dinner suits. This is the same man who, not long ago, was branded by many here as, at best, an apologist for IRA murderers, at worst, as having the blood of terrorist victims on his hands.

In the South, just a few days ago, we saw posters advertising a Republican rally where Adams was speaking in honour of IRA hunger strikers. Yet, here he is now looking like a central figure in Northern Ireland's affluent, fun-loving party set.

Later, at the Ulster Museum, we joined American tourists, musing over sectarian wall murals, graffiti and huge marching banners, the central pieces of an exhibition which appears to consign such activities to history, a part of our past

Yet, we were given a timely reminder this weekend that this is all still very much a part of the present when we were warned to stay away from the streets near our waterfront hotel as tensions ran high over planned Protestant Unionist marches in this Catholic, Nationalist area.

We heard radio reports of punishment beatings and shootings. There was also a big explosives find. Thousands of troops were on standby. Armed police patrolled the streets around our hotel in anticipation of the Easter Monday demonstrations, often flashpoints for violent confrontation.

And then, suddenly, the marches were called off, not due to pleas from politicians, church leaders or police chiefs, but because of foot-and-mouth disease.

Ironically, this animal plague has succeeded where successive governments have failed. A victory of sorts in today's increasingly confusing Northern Ireland.

SOME have pointed out that Liz Sherlock, who died after being run over after her handbag was snatched, was foolhardy. Police say she was brave but the public should not emulate her. I can identify with how she felt. Six months ago, a lorry bashed into my stationary car and drove off. I was so angry I chased him, determined he wouldn't get away with it. I finally stopped him in a cul-de-sac, got out and pointed at the extensive damage to my car. He was a huge, 6ft 4ins bloke and he denied it, with a smirk. I was so mad, so full of the sense of right and wrong, nothing was going to stop me. "Either you give me your details or I go straight to the police," I said. In the end, I scared him more than he scared me and he caved in. The thought of it now terrifies me but, at the time, like Liz Sherlock, I simply couldn't have done anything else.

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