People of the Year - January

The year in people: January

Condoleezza Rice, facilitating the spread of torture

Condoleezza Rice, appointed the US's first female secretary of state in January, is now the most popular member of the Bush administration and touted as a potential Republican candidate in the 2008 presidential race – possibly against Hillary Clinton.

Though Rice has been a key Bush advisor since his first presidential campaign and a relentless defender of his administration's "war on terror" policies, she has rarely been seen as one of the architects of US policy.

Replacing Colin Powell – who was seen to have been outmanouvred by Pentagon hawks in the battle for influence over US war policy – she was nonetheless never one of the neo-conservative cabal that set the hawkish agenda in Iraq.

Facing persistant and credible allegations that the US was running a network of "torture flights" through European airports and clandestine prisons for terrorist suspects in unnamed eastern European countries, Rice embarked on a whirlwind tour of Europe in December. Her consistent claims that the US did not endorse torture were meaningless in the face of previous revelations that the Bush administration had gradually sought to extend the definition of allowable interrogation procedures and restricted the definition of torture.

The administration again courted criticism from rights organisations in December when it was revealed that the president had authorised the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on US citizens without court orders. Once again, Condi was reeled out to do the Sunday talk show circuit, saying the normal process of obtaining court-approved search warrants for surveillance was too cumbersome for fast-paced counter-terrorism investigations.

With the quagmire in Iraq gradually impacting on Bush's approval ratings across the year – most notably when Cindy Sheehan camped outside his ranch in August – there has been increased talk of exit strategies and troop reductions. Amongst this, two recent measures suggest that Colin Powell may have retrospectively won some of the key arguments over Iraq, and have reinforced Rice's position of influence.

The Pentagon upgraded "stability operations" to the level of a core military mission, comparable to full-scale combat, and a presidential directive designated the state department as the leader of efforts to assist countries engulfed by conflict.

Viktor Yushchenko bid to paint Ukraine orange

Viktor Yushchenko started 2005 in the flush of electoral success, having won the third run-off in the Ukrainian presidential election, and having survived being poisoned in the run up to the election. He ends the year having just managed to push his 2006 budget through a hostile and factionalised parliament, and embroiled in a dispute over natural gas prices with Russia. Along the way, 18,000 state employees were fired, in a bid to reform the public services and reduce corruption; his coalition government was sacked, after resignations and claims of corruption; and economic growth rates were low, due to low international prices for Ukraine's industrial exports – but also because, claimed Yushchenko, for the first time in history a Ukrainian government had made public honest economic statistics. And Ukraine hosted the Eurovision Song Contest, in May.

Yushchenko is to implement an ambitious reform programme from 1 January 2006: included in this is a measure to increase the power of the parliament relative to the president; Yushchenko will be hoping this doesn't backfire at the 26 March parliamentary elections, which could see opposition parties under Viktor Yanukovich, the man Yushchenko defeated in the presidential poll, come to power. Ukraine's winner in the 2004 Eurovision, Ruslana, has recently been selected on Yushchenko's Our Ukraine party's candidate list for the elections.

The MCCARTNEY SISTERS and BRIDGEEN HAGANS

Robert McCartney, a 33 year old Short Strand resident was brutally murdered by IRA members in a city centre bar on 30 January.

An altercation had developed between Robert McCartney's friends and local IRA members. In a savage attack, Robert McCartney was punched to the ground, beaten with sewer roads and finally stabbed to death.

His murderers – some of them senior republicans from the Short Strand – went back to the bar and cleaned the scene before warning witnesses to say nothing.

Initially republicans blamed the murder on Belfast's "knife culture", an excuse neither the McCartney sisters nor the rest of the world bought into.

Robert McCartney's five sisters and his partner, Bridgeen Hagans, ran a campaign that took them from Belfast to Downing Street and eventually to Washington to meet George Bush.

For the first time in a decade, Irish republicans were frozen out of the White House St Patrick's Day celebration.

In March, the IRA, officially on ceasefire, announced they had offered to shoot those involved.

The IRA's alleged involvement in the Northern Bank robbery only added to their problems.

The McCartney's rejected the offer.

"We wanted justice, not revenge in a kangaroo court," Paula McCartney told Village recently.

"This past year has been an ordeal for all of us. For a time our house had the world's media camped in it.

"Six weeks ago we moved out of the Short Strand and that has lifted the pressure on us a bit. We don't have to see people involved in his murder walking the streets."

The McCartney campaign put Sinn Féin on the back foot. For the first time since the peace process began, the party had lost the initative and were being forced to react to events rather than setting the agenda. Their normally suave and self-assured style had deserted them.

Initially, Sinn Féin had advised people not to go to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) with information; however, for the first time in the history of Northern Ireland, the party relented and said that if people felt comfortable with the police they should talk to them.

The crisis deepened for Sinn Féin when it emerged that a number of party members had been in the city centre bar where the fight had began.

The McCartney murder probably hastened IRA decommissioning.

Despite pressure from some of their neighbours in the staunchly republican Short Strand district, the McCartneys pursued their campaign and accused republicans of orchestrating a campaign of intimidation against them.

"This wasn't an anti-republican campaign, most of our family are republicans," says Paula McCartney.

"Sinn Féin only have themselves to blame for how things turned out.

"If they had have acted in the interests of justice instead of immediately trying to cover up what had happened, then things could have been different.

"We went to their Ard Fheis shortly after Robert's murder.

"That probably surprised some people but we always felt that republicans held the key to solving the case.

"After going to the Ard Fheis we felt that Sinn Féin were trying to take ownership of us and we backed away – that was when the smear campaign began."

In hindsight, the family believes that their brother's murder was used as a political football.

"Of course it was, how could it have been any other way when people associated with a political party were involved in the murder?" asks Paula.

Undoubtedly Sinn Féin was rocked by the momentum of the campaign. Even amongst their allies, their image was tarnished and the continued existence of the IRA was thrown into focus.

If "off-duty" IRA members could brazenly and brutally murder a Catholic man, then how could the existence of the group be justified?

In June, two men with republican connections were charged with the murder. They are currently out on bail awaiting trial.

Two months later the IRA announced it was ending its "armed campaign".