The international soccer authority FIFA accepted Monday the right of Irish citizens to play on the Northern Ireland team, reversing a position that had angered Catholics across Ireland and triggered a government protest.

In a statement, FIFA said it would drop its two-month-old policy requiring all Northern Ireland team members to have a British passport _ a position that both the British and Irish governments had decried as nonsensical and in violation of the province's Good Friday peace accord of 1998.

The landmark pact enshrined the long-standing right of Northern Ireland residents to claim Irish or British citizenship and, as part of that right, to use passports from either the Republic of Ireland or the United Kingdom. Achieving compromise on such matters of symbolism and divided identity has proved central to soothing conflict in Northern Ireland, with its rival British Protestant and Irish Catholic blocs.

The Zurich, Switzerland-based organization said it would require the Irish Football Association, which oversees soccer in Northern Ireland, to create "a declaration relating to the Good Friday agreement and the particular situation of players born in Northern Ireland who hold an Irish Republic passport." For an Irish player to be eligible, it said, both the player and an Irish Football Association official must sign the document before each match.

The British and Irish governments both welcomed the U-turn.

Ireland's ambassador to Switzerland had challenged FIFA's legal unit to defend its British-only policy in a Zurich meeting two weeks ago.

Britain's secretary of state for Northern Ireland, Peter Hain, said he was "delighted by this news, which is clearly a victory for common sense and for all football fans in Northern Ireland."

"The right of people in Northern Ireland to choose to identify themselves as Irish, British or both is fundamental to the Belfast agreement," Hain said.

Catholic players from Northern Ireland, who tend to claim Irish citizenship, said FIFA had been effectively threatening to force them from the team.

As it is, few Catholics feel comfortable playing for Northern Ireland, a team with an overwhelmingly Protestant fan base. The most high-profile former Catholic player on the Northern Ireland team, Glasgow Celtic midfielder Neil Lennon, quit after his family received death threats from Protestant extremists.

Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern said FIFA's previous argument _ that a British passport amounted to proof of eligibility to play for Northern Ireland _ made no sense, because all a British passport does is establish citizenship of the United Kingdom: England, Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.

But Ahern said he did understand why FIFA had sought to impose a one-passport rule.

He said it proved confusing to FIFA officials when, before a match, Northern Ireland players presented a mix of British and Irish passports. He noted, in particular, a match in Montenegro two months ago involving Northern Ireland's under-21 squad when "Montenegrin officials saw they had two different passports and didn't really understand this."

The Irish Football Association in Belfast said it was drafting the citizenship declaration as required by FIFA. "The administrative detail of this is being finalized with FIFA, which will take a short while," it said.