BBC News Online users e-mailed in their questions - read what he had to say.

BBC News Online's Joanna Ross puts your questions to Denis Murray

Alison Keogh, England: Do you ever find it difficult to present a balanced view of the conflicts?

Denis Murray: Politically no because a great hero of mine Robin Walsh who used to be the News Editor here and then also became the BBC controller of Northern Ireland said that you should leave your political opinions at home. But what I do find difficult is to remain objective after something like the Shankhill bombing, or when you have an Omagh, when you have an Enniskillen it's very hard to retain your objectivity because you see the grief it causes for no real change in the political situation.

Even as an ordinary citizen you are very angry with the people who have done these things. So politically objectivity is not a problem. On a human basis when you see tragedy or atrocity, yes it is quite difficult to retain your objectivity.

Ken Holt, UK:My question is simply this: how can what appears to be an insoluble problem, with the Ulster Unionist Party and Sinn Fein refusing to move, be solved in a way that is credible to each side?

Denis Murray: That's what the parties are working on at the moment with the two prime ministers - that's the $64,000 question. The positions at UUP and SF have adopted seem immovable - and they are not bluffing. Both sides have a real difficulty here with this whole decommissioning of arms issue and the setting up of the Most have difficulty in setting up the executive or cabinet of the devolved assembly. It really does look intractable.

That's why the two prime ministers are still throwing their energy at this. Of course it can be done. How do you set it up in such a way so that it can be done? How do you set it up so that David Trimble, the leader of the Ulster Unionists party and Gerry Adams, the President of Sinn Fein, hand something that looks credible to their supporters. If it was up to the two party leaderships, this problem wouldn't have got to the scale it's got. But I think their hands are tied on this one by their own closest supporters.

In David Trimble's case an awful lot of people in his party who didn't like the Good Friday Agreement to start with, and politically speaking, would love to see his head on a plate, would risk his leadership of the Ulster Unionists party by moving. I think Gerry Adams would seriously risk his credibility and his position as the President of Sinn Fein if he does something that his party faithful simply won't accept. What everybody's working on at the moment is trying to find a way of not who blinks first in the old political cliché, but let's try and find a way of simultaneous blinking. If you can come up with something that both sides can live with and sell to their supporters then, of course, it can be done. But the problem is it hasn't been done up to now. Nobody's come up with a big idea yet and that's why we're still in this stalemate. But it can be done. Whether it will be done or not is another whole question.

Matt Shez, UK: You report on a very sensitive subject. Would you ever turn down a story if the threat of retaliation was too great?

Denis Murray: I wouldn't turn down a story. It's my job to report on Northern Ireland, on Ireland as a whole. I might report on it but I might not physically go to where the story is happening, because if you've reported on somewhere in a place as divided as this, for as long as I have, then your mere presence would get the camera crew noticed for instance, colleagues would get noticed and you might attract abuse - even physical violence.

I think if I thought I was going to be a danger to other people by being there then I might turn it down. But in my 25-year career I have never asked the crew to go anywhere I wouldn't go with them. Most of the criticism is verbal but there is very little physical abuse against journalists. Camera crews attract more physical violence. Crowds when angry take it out on the camera or soundman. So far I've never turned a story down, but if it got dangerous for other people I would. But I don't want to bleak too bleak a picture of Northern Ireland. Northern Ireland is not as dangerous as a lot of other places where journalists have had to go.

Paul Hartnett, USA: Do you think the Unionists will allow the Republicans to participate in a Parliament before decommissioning?

Denis Murray: They already participate in the parliament in shadow form. In other words it doesn't have its devolved powers yet. The Republicans already have a considerable number of seats in the devolved assembly in Northern Ireland. The question is whether Unionists will accept people from Sinn Fein in the executive, in the cabinet, of that assembly? I think that something that people don't understand is that it's not a voluntary coalition. People get their seats in this 10-person executive on the basis of their electoral strength. Sinn Fein are entitled to two seats as of right because of their electoral strength.

Now it's not whether David Trimble and the Ulster Unionists party will allow them to be in that. It's whether politically they could sit in that executive with Sinn Fein before the IRA has handed over anything. That's really the crux of it. The parliament's not the problem, it's the executive. To answer that question I think the Ulster Unionists have got themselves into the position of where they can't. You're going to have to come up with an idea that allows the Ulster Unionists credibly to sit in that executive with Sinn Fein at the same time, or just before or just after, something is happening from the IRA. But the parliament isn't the point. They're already in the parliament. They've got their seats there and they've got their mandate and they've got those two seats in the executive as of right.

Helen Williams, England:If Sinn Fein is committed to the peace agreement, then why won't Gerry Adams persuade the IRA to give up their arms?

Denis Murray: I think Gerry Adams has been doing that. This is complicated because Sinn Fein have said they are not the IRA, they're a separate organisation. But the British and Irish governments have said that Sinn Fein and the IRA are inextricably linked. Do Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams lead the Republican movement as a whole or just Sinn Fein? They are the two main leaders of the Republican movement. They can't tell IRA "volunteers" to hand over weapons.

I suspect Gerry Adams would ask them if it was do-able. Just as I suspect David Trimble would say that the decommissioning issue isn't the big deal it's been blown up into if he could get away with it with his own grassroots. I don't think either of them can. This idea of persuading the IRA makes it sound as if Sinn Fein is entirely separate from the IRA and it isn't. Whether they can persuade them or not I don't know.

Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness have looked at the Republican movement and said it's not do-able. Their imperative is - do not split the movement. It ended in civil war in the 1920s. If you split a Republican movement people shoot each other. What's the point of having an inclusive process if suddenly he only represents one rump of that? If Gerry Adams felt he could deliver nine tenths of the IRA, he would. I think Gerry Adams is hearing from his own activists that he can't.

Lyndon Nixon, Belfast, Northern Ireland:What role do you think the churches can play in the continuing quest for peace, especially the decommissioning impasse?

Denis Murray: Of all the questions I've been asked that's the most difficult. The churches have been criticised lately in that they have changed nothing in Northern Ireland for over 30 years. An awful lot of church leaders have condemned atrocities and tried to set up reconciliation groups or peace groups and have said all the worthy things. But I have heard very sharp criticism of them for not really being able to do anything practical in terms of resolving the problem.

Individual churchmen played a part in delivering the IRA ceasefire in 1994 and the loyalist ceasefire by the paramilitary groups on that side followed it and that's been the biggest role the churchmen have played. Prior to that the role churchmen have played was in another ceasefire by the IRA and that was in late 1974 after talks in a place called Feakle in County Clare. But really churches in a way have been impotent during this because although the IRA and Sinn Fein are made up of Catholics, Sinn Fein deeply distrusts and are deeply suspicious of the Roman Catholic church even though they are Roman Catholics because they feel they are, if not exactly agents of the state, at least people who are against their ultimate objective - a united Ireland.

Churches say violence is wrong but it has continued. If you talk to Loyalist Paramilitaries for instance, many of them are very Bible-driven and they regard themselves not just as soldiers in a war but very fundamental Christians and yet the churches have been unable to stop them. How they can do it I'm not sure. The role they played four or five years ago was shuttling between governments and groups and built confidence reassured people. For instance, Archbishop Robin Eames, the head of the Anglican church in Ireland, the church of Ireland, made a point of saying, after the IRA ceasefire in 1994, this ceasefire is genuine. This was after Loyalist paramilitaries had said they wanted to hear prominent people from the Unionists/Protestant side to reassure them and it was a very important voice. I'm not sure how you could recreate that role.

Terry Robinson, London (born in Omagh): Having left Northern Ireland 10 years ago myself, I look upon the "troubles" more objectively than I did when I was engrossed in them each day. Do you feel that having been born in England, brought up in Belfast and worked in Dublin, that you are uniquely placed to objectively report the sentiments and wishes of all the parties, north and south of the border and in the UK as a whole?

Denis Murray: I once said to Barry White, a prominent columnist at the Evening Belfast Telegraph - I told him about my background that I'd been born in England, brought up in Belfast and had gone to college and worked in Dublin and he said: "You're even more confused than I am!" Barry's reputation at the Telegraph is as the man who put out the light at the end of the tunnel. It either makes me uniquely qualified or more confused than anyone else. As a human-being there's a wee bit of my head that will always be English, most of my head is Northern Ireland, but there's a wee bit of me also and slightly larger than the English part which'll be Dublin.

Working in Dublin taught me about people of the Republic. They told me what they thought of Northern Ireland. That's helped with my coverage of Northern Ireland. The view from the Republic of Ireland is slightly similar, but different from that of people in England, Scotland and Wales which is that people in the Republic were of the view that the Catholic side of Northern Ireland was probably their side for a while. But then after decades of IRA atrocity and I think particularly the Warrington bombing - in which the two little boys were murdered - that really transformed opinion in the Republic. There were hundreds, thousands of bouquets, flowers and cards left in O'Connell Street and in St Stephen's Green in the city. And the whole refrain on the cards was that 'this was not done in our name'.

The people in the Republic are deeply embarrassed by this conflict and wish it would just go away and leave them alone. They don't really understand the conflict. But it's really since Warrington which, if I was to pick one event that changed opinion in the Republic it was the Warrington bombing. It was as though the IRA had blown people up in Dublin. Now the IRA's rule is do not carry out "verbal" operations in the Republic. They started to lose support there. Sinn Fein won support after the ceasefire. I suspect there's similar feeling in England, Wales and Scotland - they think I don't understand this, go away leave us alone. I was also political correspondent in Northern Ireland here and that helped.

Michael Harman, England: As we seem to be approaching yet another impasse in the 'peace' talks, how can political leaders convince the people of the United Kingdom that compromise is achievable?

Denis Murray: Compromise is achievable, how the Northern Ireland political leaders persuade people in the United Kingdom - I'm not sure. I was in Downing Street earlier this week - in came the Ulster Unionists, Sinn Fein, the SDLP and at the end of the street was a group of Serbs protesting about Nato bombing. Some-one said "Five years ago that would have been Sinn Fein protesting about not being included in talks, or Loyalists protesting that they were included." Now at least they are in the one place and they are talking, but they just haven't got the modus operandi to get it to work.

Ben Broadbent, English catholic living in the US:I have lived here in the U.S. for four years now. It's a great place. But their knowledge of, and attitude towards Ireland always staggers me. They believe, a lot of them, that Britain and Ireland are at war, that the majority of the Irish, both in the north and the south, support the IRA, and that the British on the mainland are desperate to remain there. Do you think this has helped or hindered the peace process?

Denis Murray: I wouldn't doubt that Ben's right in that analysis. My brother-in-law lives near Philadelphia and we visited him in about 1995, when Gerry Adams was a celebrity in the US and being compared to as the Irish Nelson Mandela. His next door neighbour said: "You must realise Denis that very few of us in America have heard of anybody but Gerry Adams." It seemed most Irish Americans supported the IRA until John Hume, leader of SDLP, got hold of people like Teddy Kennedy in Congress and others. And the Irish government ran a campaign to change politicians' minds.

Not nearly as much fund raising is done for organisations like Noraid and other organisations associated with Sinn Fein now as much as ten years ago. There was a big sea change with Oklahoma and the World Trade Centre bombings. Americans hadn't had to deal with domestic violence before. They were appalled, there was a big sea change in American opinion.

Some Irish Americans tried to get at President Clinton during his election campaign. I doubt President Clinton had thought for more than 5 sec about Northern Ireland before running his candidacy. As soon as he hit the White House suddenly you had a US ambassador in Dublin who wanted to help the peace process, people at national security level who wanted to help the peace process, people who wanted to help John Major and Albert Reynolds push the peace process.

In the last few years President Clinton and the weight of the US administration has definitely helped the peace process. For instance on Good Friday afternoon last year when the Ulster Unionists were having a major difficulty with the final text the phone rang and someone said "Is David there?" and David Trimble took the phone and it was "Hi, its Bill here, anything to do to help I will." Perhaps because of what went on before the influence of the Clinton Administration has been beneficial in the making of the Good Friday Agreement.

Lionel, UK:How do you see the IRA overcoming fear and distrust that is so obvious?

Denis Murray: I'm not sure I understand that question. The fear of the IRA? Everyone here fears and distrusts everyone else anyway. I think the latest meetings between the British and Irish prime ministers have been about trust. If David Trimble really trusted Gerry Adams and Ulster Unionists really trusted the Republican movement there would not be a problem over decommissioning.

If Republicans really trusted Loyalists and Unionists they would start to hand over their weapons. If the question is of the fear of the IRA, there are an awful lot of people here who are fear Loyalist paramilitaries as well, a lot of people opposed to the security forces on both sides. So I think it's not just a question to do with Republicans I think its a question of everybody.

Joe Neal, USA: In light of Mr. Clintons' past record of showing up at the last moment and taking credit for years of hard work by others, do you expect him to actually come there and try to mediate the situation?

Denis Murray: No, I don't. In fact in fairness to President Clinton, he stayed out of the way, he was in the background. His real big contribution was to allow people like Gerry Adams and Sinn Fein into the USA. For years, successive US administrations wanted nothing to do with the IRA - that was how they saw Sinn Fein. So it helped Republican leaders to persuade the IRA that they were greeted by world leaders and politics was working as opposed to physical force.