The Church of Ireland Primate, Archbishop Robin Eames, has called on the IRA to decommission arms as an act of faith so that political progress can be achieved in Northern Ireland.
However, he stressed that movement on decommissioning must be seen as the final obstacle to peace. "Republicanism needs to be reassured that the minute that decommissioning takes place there will not be another problem raised. That has got to be the end of it and we have got to move forward." In an interview with BBC Radio Ulster yesterday he said unionism must now recognise the fact that republicanism had come "a very long way". The decommissioning issue was a "sensitive stage" in the implementation of the Belfast Agreement. A meeting between the archbishop and the Sinn Fein leader, Mr Gerry Adams, is now possible but previously it would have been "misunderstood". The men have never meet face to face but Dr Eames said he is "now open to listening to everyone".
Meanwhile, with a further round of negotiations between party representatives due to be held at Stormont tomorrow, the UK Unionist Party leader, Mr Robert McCartney, has said any assumption that a deal can be struck on decommissioning before March 29th would be "quite a false conclusion".
Mr McCartney said on Saturday that the Northern Secretary, Dr Mowlam, was trying to create a "pressure cooker situation with all the emotional overtones of the anniversary of Good Friday" to forge a deal on the arms issue.
Mr McCartney said he did not believe IRA decommissioning would take place before the deadline set by Dr Mowlam for the triggering of the D'Hondt mechanism and the setting up of an executive.
If IRA decommissioning takes place Sinn Fein would be a minority party in the Northern Ireland Assembly with "scarcely any more political clout than the Alliance Party", he said.