By Paul Hoskins

BELFAST, March 7 (Reuters) - In traditionally divided West Belfast, voters choosing a new assembly for Northern Ireland on Wednesday were united on one issue at least -- they don't want water charges.

"The most important issue is getting the right people in, people that care about you, about things like water rates and the housing tax," said 91-year-old Brian Colbert at a polling station just off the mainly Protestant Shankill Road.

The sectarian divide between Pro-British Protestants and pro-Irish Catholics has by no means disappeared.

But nine years after a peace deal largely ended violence, there are also other preoccupations at an election that could open the way for reviving a power sharing government to bring provincial decision making back from London.

The prospect of new water charges to be imposed soon by the British administration has caused particular anger.

"We have water charges, we have increased rates. We can't afford not to have our voices heard here," said retired teacher Eamon O'Neill in the largely Catholic Falls Road area of Belfast.

Despite the end to the violence, political paralysis has continued. Britain and Ireland have threatened to suspend the assembly in favour of indefinite direct rule if there is no agreement on power sharing by March 26.

Many remain sceptical that any of the local politicians would change much.

"I won't vote and I never have because it's pointless," said one Catholic taxi driver, declining to give his name because he works on both sides of the divide. "They just squabble amongst themselves," said the driver, who saw family members killed during the violence.

EXTREMES

Expected to do best in the election are old foes -- the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Fein, political ally of Irish Republican Army guerrillas, who fought British rule for three decades.

One of the reasons there is greater sympathy for the parties that were at the political extremes during bloodshed in which 3,600 people were killed is that they are seen as being better at campaigning on local issues.

"Round the doorsteps the constitutional issues are still there, but you know things like water rates, education and health are coming forward as well," said Nigel Dodds, a DUP member of the London parliament.

"This has gone on so long now that people focus on other things," he said of the sectarian quarrelling.

Both the DUP and Sinn Fein have also been swayed by pressure for policy change from their own constituencies.

While the DUP, of Protestant firebrand Ian Paisley, has left the door open to power sharing, Sinn Fein recently voted to accept police and courts dominated by the Protestant majority.

"I think in many ways the public are ahead of the politicians," said Ray Mullan of the Community Relations Council, a charity set up to promote better relations between protestants and Catholics.

"The politicians are clearly uncomfortable, but they know that's the direction they have to go," he said.

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