Briefing given on British-Irish strategy to boost peace process

The British and Irish governments have agreed a strategy to inject momentum into the peace process in the coming weeks, President Clinton was told yesterday. It is intended to move on the establishment of a Human Rights Commission, North and South, and on reforming the RUC. Work on the North-South Ministerial Council and bodies and the British-Irish dimension of the agreement will also be accelerated.

Details of the British-Irish strategy, aimed at shifting the focus away from the potential stumbling blocks of decommissioning and the establishment of the shadow Executive, were spelled out to Mr Clinton at his private half-hour meeting with the Taoiseach in Government Buildings yesterday.

Mr Ahern told the President that he and Mr Blair already had agreed the strategy. The move to broaden the focus of the Belfast Agreement, according to Government sources, comes at a time when concern is mounting over the potential problems ahead later this month. There is a growing realisation in Government circles that the shadow Executive may not be set up in the next two weeks. The British-Irish strategy is to sidestep potential logjams by focusing on other aspects of the agreement.

At a short press conference before meeting Mr Clinton, the Taoiseach recorded his appreciation to President Clinton for the dynamic he had brought to the peace process in the run-up to his visit. "What the President's visit has done," Mr Ahern said, "is it has got the parties to move what might have taken weeks and months over a very short period because they looked at the agenda that was set before us and they made the moves."

It had given confidence to all to move on. "It's given confidence I think to the [Ulster] Unionist Party and Sinn Fein to make moves that are brave and efficient to the process.

"And we're very grateful not only for this visit, and the last visit, but the fact that this President of the United States has given us an enormous amount of time, a huge amount of support, and an enormous amount of encouragement to move forward. And we're very grateful for that".

The President, for his part, asked what he could do to help the process in the future and promised his continued support to maintain the momentum. The message he had got from Omagh, he told Mr Ahern, was that people wanted the political development of the agreement to continue so that there could be no vacuum for those using terror as a weapon.

On his personal reaction to his Omagh visit, the President said he had been overwhelmed by the dimensions of the tragedy and the random, cruel nature of the violence.

"Sometimes just listening to people's story and letting them say what they hope will happen next . . . in many cases yesterday letting them reaffirm their belief in the peace . . . sometimes that helps," he said.

What he was hoping to do was to bring the support of the people of the United States to the families there.

The air strikes in Afghanistan and Sudan were raised by Mr Ahern and the President said that their security information was that there was a mounting increase in the number of international terrorists "of no cause or country".

On the Russian problems, both leaders agreed to the necessity to put an institutional framework in place where the market could work.