Two women from different nations that share the same place spoke last night about how to guarantee an end to centuries of strife in Northern Ireland.

Rita O'Hare, general secretary of Sinn Fein, and Dawn Purvis, head of the Progressive Unionist Party, spoke last night at the University of Pittsburgh, where they traded views on how to bring two bitterly divided people together in the six counties of Ireland that remain a part of Great Britain.

"Not all that long ago, we would not have been able to share a platform together, as much as we might have wanted to," said Ms. O'Hare, who advocates folding Northern Ireland into the adjacent Republic of Ireland.

Ms. Purvis, a generation younger than Ms. O'Hare, grew up without knowing any Catholics or Irish republicans. She remains committed to keeping Northern Ireland British and described herself as "a child of the Troubles."

The forum was co-sponsored by the Ireland Institute of Pittsburgh and the Pitt's Center for International Study.

Northern Ireland's republicans -- so called because they seek a unified Republic of Ireland -- are overwhelmingly Catholic. The unionists, so called because they want to retain union with Great Britain, are overwhelmingly Protestant. Religion and politics have often remained conflated in the armed struggle, further deepening divisions and sometimes exploited by politicians on both sides.

That the two women were at the same table was remarkable in itself and testimony to the extraordinary movement toward peace that has since followed cease-fires by both the IRA and pro-British paramilitaries on the unionist side.

Ms. O'Hare's party, Sinn Fein, served as the political wing of the IRA. Ms. Purvis's party, the PUP, was the political arm of the Ulster Volunteer Force, founded by former paramilitary David Ervine.

Both women came praising the United States for its role in brokering the Good Friday Agreement that largely ended violence in Northern Ireland.

The armed portion of that struggle, which stretches through British and Irish history, flickered throughout the centuries and reignited in the North in 1968, when the Catholic minority sought full civil rights. After more than 3,000 deaths in a region with less than 2 million people and an armed occupation by the British military, the Troubles began to subside with cease-fires by both the IRA and the Loyalist paramilitaries.

An overarching political settlement has remained elusive in the 15 years since the peace process began.

"There's a lot of problems on both sides. There's hardliners on the Republican movement, and there are hardliners within the unionist movement," said Tony Novosel, a Pitt professor regarded as one of the leading American experts on Northern Irish politics and the unionist movement. "The goal is to transform it into a long-term peaceful society in which both traditions can get along," he said.

One of the great ironies of the peace process, both women agreed in interviews, was the common ground between loyalist and republican families once the issue of national identity was out of the equation.

Ms. Purvis viewed that as a legacy of Mr. Ervine, who died two years ago. "People in the unionist community needed to wake up and realize that Northern Ireland was a bloody awful place," she recalled him saying.

In government, Sinn Fein and the PUP have found common ground on a number of social welfare issues in the working-class areas each side represents. "That is one of the wonderful transformations that the peace process has brought," Ms. O'Hare said. "We have common purpose in some areas."

Still, not every transformation appeared welcome last night.

The question of Irish unification remains a clear line of demarcation between the two party figures, evident in the flat answers given to a question from the audience: Would most people in the adjacent Republic of Ireland welcome a return of the north?

Replied Ms. Purvis: "In a word? No."

The question turned to Ms. O'Hare.

"In a word? Yes," she replied.

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