Fine Gael has criticised the Taoiseach's softened stance on decommissioning, saying this is a fundamental issue on which no tactical concession should have been made.
In a paper on the peace process presented yesterday to Mr Ahern, the Fine Gael leader, Mr John Bruton, criticised the Taoiseach's view ail earlier this week, that a new Northern Ireland executive should be established before any paramilitary weapons are disposed of. He said this contradicted Mr Ahern's view of last February and represented a dramatic change of strategy.
The Fine Gael paper quotes Mr Ahern's comment to the Sunday Times last February: "I am on record in recent weeks and months as saying that it is not compatible with being part of a government - I mean part of an executive - that there is not at least a commencement of decommissioning, and that would apply in the North, it would apply in the South. That is what we need to achieve."
When asked if there could not be an executive without a start to decommissioning, the Taoiseach then answered: "Yes, I mean that is the practical politics . . ." However, this week in the Dail Mr Ahern said that "it is first essential to establish all the institutions".
This, said Mr Bruton, was a radical reversal of his position and accepts Sinn Fein's position that that party would have to be in the executive before any question of actual decommissioning would even arise.
"In February he said that decommissioning should start first, and yesterday he said the executive should be set up first."
Mr Bruton's paper says the issue of decommissioning was a fundamental constitutional issue for the State. Article 15 of the Constitution says: "The right to raise and maintain military or armed forces is vested exclusively in the Oireachtas" and "No military force, other than a military or armed force raised and maintained by the Oireachtas, shall be raised or maintained for any purpose whatsoever."
This was not a matter on which a tactical concession should have been made without a quid pro quo, he said. "The republican movement has so far not given any public indication of a quid pro quo for the Taoiseach's public reversal of his position on the timing of a start to decommissioning."
"Agreeing publicly to postpone a start to decommissioning until after the executive is set up, without a corresponding public concession by Sinn Fein, the PUP or the UDP, is hard to understand given that all these parties agreed long ago that this issue would have to be tackled."
Sinn Fein and the PUP had made "successive and repeated commitments" to use all their influence to get the decommissioning of all paramilitary arms within two years of the endorsement of the referendum on the Belfast Agreement. However "so far, neither organisation has put any arms at all beyond use, and we are more than halfway through the two-year period.
"Furthermore", the Fine Gael paper says, "there is evidence that the IRA and the UVF have now adopted a position of principle that they will either never disarm, or at best they will not even make a start on fulfilling their Good Friday agreement obligation to disarmament until every other obligation in the agreement on every other party has been fulfilled in total by those other parties. This is untenable."
Mr Bruton's document questions Sinn Fein's contention that it is not the IRA, and that all it is obliged to do is "work constructively and in good faith" and "use any influence they may have". It was not prepared to be accountable for the issue.
However "if they are separate from the IRA and not accountable for them, then Sinn Fein should be free to publicly disagree with and disown the position of the IRA when the IRA refuses to countenance any disarmament."