 Decommissioning was a defining issue in the effort to negotiate peace in Northern Ireland.The Belfast Agreement, or Good Friday Agreement, was signed in Belfast on 10 April 1998 (Good Friday) by the British and Irish governments and endorsed by most Northern Ireland political parties.It contained provisions for a government involving both Catholics and Protestants, whose traditional aspirations, expressed as nationalism on one side and unionism on the other, had often clashed over the years.