London  - The deadly attack on British soldiers in Northern Ireland comes as a severe setback - but not a death blow - to the fragile peace process in the province.

Although marking a shocking reminder of the "terrible past" of 30 years of civil strife - known as the Troubles - in the British province, the attack did not come out of the blue.

Northern Ireland's police chief, Hugh Orde, had warned tirelessly over the past 18 months that "dissident Republicans" who remained violently opposed to the peace process would strike at the security forces.

Before Saturday night's deadly attack on the Massereene army base, north of Belfast, there had been more than a dozen unsuccessful bids to hit the police force in the province.

They included the discovery of a 136-kilogram bomb outside an army base in County Down last month, which was defused by army experts.

Just a few days ago, Orde angered Sinn Fein, the mainstream pro-Irish republican party of Gerry Adams, by requesting the support of British army intelligence experts in the monitoring of activities of Republican dissidents.

The attack, experts said Sunday, had proved that Orde saw an intelligence picture showing a worrying increase in planned attacks, such as the drive-by-shooting on Saturday night in which gunmen used a pizza delivery as a cover.

The attack is seen as an attempt by dissident groups to wreck the peace process and bring down the shaky power-sharing government between Protestants and Catholics in Belfast.

For British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, the flare-up of violence in Northern Ireland is an additional headache on top of the deep economic crisis and his own struggle against poor ratings in opinion polls.

"We shall step up our efforts to make the peace process one that can last and endure," Brown vowed Sunday.

The attack was the first death of a British soldier in Northern Ireland since 1997.

A year later, the Good Friday Peace Agreement was signed, laying the foundation for military withdrawal, the decommissioning of weapons held by paramilitary groups and the establishment of a power-sharing government.

Saturday's attack came less than two years after the British military wound down Operation Banner, as their 40-year presence in Northern Irleand was code-named.

During the period of strife between Catholics and Protestants, more than 3,500 people died, including 500 soldiers and members of the security forces.

The withdrawal in August 2007, meant that Northern Ireland's new police force, and not the British military, patrolled the streets of Northern Ireland following a handover of security responsibility.

The presence of the 5,000 British soldiers that remained in barracks in Northern Ireland was symbolic, compared with the deployment of 27,000 at the height of the conflict.

The soldiers that remained in Northern Ireland were there to be trained for deployment in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other conflict zones, often applying their "Northern Ireland expertise" in dealing with civil strife to overseas missions.

The two men who died, both in their early 20s, were about to be despatched to Afghanistan.

However shocking Saturday's attack, analysts believe that the dissident terrorists neither have sufficient arms nor popular support to mount a serious and sustained campaign comparable to that waged by the Irish Republican Army (IRA) during the conflict.

Nonetheless, questions will have to asked, and answered, about the continuing circulation of weapons in Northern Ireland, and the effectiveness of the arms decommissioning process.

On the political front, extremist voices on both sides of the Protestant-Catholic divide are expected to exploit the events as confirmation of their belief that power-sharing and reconciliation cannot work in Northern Ireland.

The majority, however, are likely to accept that the "reality of peace" and the dividend it has brought for the economic and social development of Northern Ireland deserves their backing.

Politicians on all sides know that the attack illustrates the potential for the current security problem to escalate into a major political problem, and that jeopardizing the power-sharing arrangements would only play into the hands of the hardline gunmen.

Much will now depend on how the political leaders of Northern Ireland, Protestant First Minister Peter Robinson, and his Sinn Fein deputy, Martin McGuinness, respond to the new threat, and whether they will work together to prevent future attacks. dpa