The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, may initiate a series of meetings when they meet in Dublin tomorrow involving the pro-Belfast Agreement parties to try to defuse tensions over last week's decision to postpone the Assembly elections. Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor, reports.
The two leaders are expected to agree formally to push ahead with elements of the Joint Declaration which are not conditional on the IRA declaring that it will cease specific activity such as "punishment" attacks, targeting and procuring weapons.
Mr Ahern and Mr Blair are concerned that a dangerous political vacuum could arise because of the election postponement and, sources said, may bring forward to the early summer a scheduled autumn review of the Belfast Agreement. "Tony Blair doesn't want to sit on his hands on this over the summer, although I think people will need a week or two before any meetings take place in order to cool down," said a senior London source.
A Sinn Féin spokesman said he expected the governments would organise some meetings in the coming weeks. "There will be one or two meetings, but that will be it for the summer," he said.
The spokesman also denied a report in Saturday's Irish Times that the IRA was not prepared to include as an addendum to its private statement of April 13th the clarifications of that statement provided by Mr Gerry Adams last week emphasising the IRA's peaceful intentions.
The IRA, meanwhile, said it would publish its original statement of April 13th after IRA members had first seen the statement. That statement could be published as soon as today or Wednesday at the latest, a republican source said.
The Northern Secretary, Mr Paul Murphy, told the BBC at the weekend that a new IRA statement signalling that the organisation would not engage in specific acts would be required to allow elections to be held in the autumn.
There was continuing recrimination over the weekend at Mr Blair's decision to postpone the elections. At a hunger strike commemorative rally in west Belfast yesterday, Sinn Féin's chief negotiator, Mr Martin McGuinness, spoke of the "anger, fury and dismay within nationalist and republican Ireland".
"I don't accept that the decision to postpone the election was in any way about saving the Good Friday agreement. This was a decision taken solely in my view to preserve the Ulster Unionist leader who was not prepared to embrace and promote and give leadership within his own community for the Good Friday agreement.
"It was nothing short of the betrayal of the Good Friday agreement and the peace process by the British government at the behest of unionist leaders who find it difficult to come to terms with change," he added. "The people who need to answer questions now is not the leadership of Sinn Féin, is not the leadership of the IRA, it is the leadership of the British government and the Irish Government. They have to tell us how they are going to sort out this mess and get the peace process back on track again."
Mr McGuinness then turned on the Minister for Justice for saying that the Government was an honest broker in the peace process negotiations. He said Mr McDowell's remarks were "total and absolute rubbish".
"I challenge the Taoiseach, I challenge the Irish Government to tell us that they are not honest brokers, are not neutral, that they are on the side of the peace process, on the side of the Good Friday agreement and that they are on the side of Irish citizens in the North."
Mr McGuinness also said that an Ulster Unionist "very, very close" to the party leadership told him last week that irrespective of what the IRA and Mr Gerry Adams said or did, the UUP had no intention of holding an Ulster Unionist Council meeting to formally endorse a return to power-sharing government after the election.