Ahern urges all parties to take time on issues

The Taoiseach urged all parties in the North to take time over a considered response to the two governments' proposals published yesterday. Speaking in Galway, Mr Ahern said he believed the proposals were "balanced" and carried "an enormous amount of detail". Parties could have access to any of the "back-up" documents or the implementation plan if they wished.

In a carefully worded message to the republican movement, he said "all four issues" had to be addressed.

"We never said that the issues were linked, but equally so we've said that all the issues have to be dealt with."

Asked if there was an alternative, the Taoiseach responded: "Quite frankly, we've discussed for six full months, we've listened for hours and hours at length to everybody's views up and down, and we, in the end, have to call it in a balanced and comprehensive way, and that's what I think we've done.

"We have spent a long time working on this. In one form or another, we've been working on the four remaining and outstanding issues since January 11th, particularly in the last number of months, and at the talks leading up to Weston Park. We have been working hard to try and find a conclusion.

"We believe that the proposals are balanced. I accept that there's an enormous amount of detail in them."

He said that the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, and the Northern Secretary, Dr John Reid, had made it clear, in relation to any of the back-up documents, the implementation plan or any of the other documents, "if the parties want to look at those, they can also do that, so they can make a conclusion, in the round, of all that we've put on the table.

"We would ask them to carefully study them and to look at all of the consequences of them, and hopefully find a way of accepting them," the Taoiseach said.

"They are balanced, they are detailed, we believe that it's a comprehensive addressing of the issues that have created great difficulty in this process over the last few years and really we do think that they have the necessary balance and the necessary detail to overcome these difficulties.

"We do understand that everyone can't win on all of these issues, but in a careful examination of them I think that they would see that the balance is correct.

"I've said time and time again with Tony Blair during the detailed discussions we've had over all of these months that there were problems for everybody in some of these issues and good solutions for others, and by having a very balanced document it means they all have to be dealt with. Otherwise we will not get the merits of the Good Friday agreement."

The Taoiseach reiterated that both he and Mr Blair hoped "everybody" would examine the documents, and that all parties would respond by next week, as they had been asked to do.

Asked if this was the end of the "post-Good Friday agreement negotiations", he said: "We hope that people will study these, clarify them where they need, but I think they are fairly clear, they've been discussed and debated at length, and I think we've given in the documents themselves very full data, and in the discussions around them."

The parties were aware of the content of "an enormous amount of background papers", he said.

"So we now have to get a response so that we can see the full implementation in a balanced way, a comprehensive way, of the outstanding issues of the Good Friday agreement."