DUBLIN -- John Bruton became prime minister of Ireland on Thursday at the head of an untried right-left coalition government, ending a monthlong political crisis that cast a shadow over the Northern Ireland peace process.


Bruton, 47, said his "Government of Renewal" grouping his center-right Fine Gael party, the Labour Party and the radical Democratic Left would make the peace push launched by Dublin and London exactly one year ago its top priority.


"We are going to work ceaselessly and sensitively to make peace a permanent part of the future," Bruton, who describes himself as a Christian Democrat, told parliament in announcing a 15-member cabinet that gives Democratic Left its first ministerial post.


He heads a so-called "rainbow coalition" grouping all shades of the Irish political spectrum to replace the partnership government of former prime minister Albert Reynolds which collapsed in a row over legal appointments last month.


Of the 165 seats in parliament, Fine Gael has 47, Labour 32 and the Democratic Left six. The main opposition is Reynolds' Fianna Fail, which with 67 seats is parliament's largest party.


Formation of the government was stalled at the last minute by Democratic Left's insistence that it be given two cabinet seats but it accepted a compromise under which its leader, Proinsias de Rossa, took the Social Welfare portfolio.


Under the compromise the two-year-old party, which has its roots in a pro-Moscow Marxist workers party, will get several junior ministries, party officials said.


Bruton's appointment, ending a month of political turmoil that has placed the peace process in jeopardy, came as representatives from Britain and Northern Ireland's Protestant guerrillas were meeting for landmark peace talks near Belfast.


Delegates from the Ulster Democratic Party and the Progressive Unionist Party told Britain that despite a ceasefire in the province's 25-year guerrilla conflict, pro-British guerrillas are not yet ready to hand in their arms. The British officials had given the "loyalist" politicians the same message which they spelled out to Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army, in similar ground-breaking dialogue last week.


The government demanded that the Protestant guerrillas get rid of their weapons and said the current talks could not be completed without that clear "commitment to exclusively peaceful methods."


Politicians from the Progressive Unionist Party replied in a document outlining their position that illegal arms existed because of continuing distrust.


Bruton, a one-time finance minister who says he has a firm commitment to keep a lid on government spending, named Labour's Ruairi Quinn as finance minister.


Quinn is viewed as a shrewd and pragmatic modern financial brain and his nomination was well received in Irish financial markets, which had been nervous in the past month.