Parties engage in intense talks on NI power sharing

A Sinn Féin delegation, including the party's president, Mr Gerry Adams, is to meet the Taoiseach in Dublin tomorrow as efforts…

A Sinn Féin delegation, including the party's president, Mr Gerry Adams, is to meet the Taoiseach in Dublin tomorrow as efforts to restore power sharing in Northern Ireland intensify.

The delegation will also include chief negotiator, Mr Martin McGuinness, Ard Chomhairle member Cllr Joe O'Reilly, Ms Michelle Gildernew, Ms Caitriona Ruane, and Mr Gerry Kelly. The meeting is being held in Government Buildings at 12.15 p.m.

Things are at a very delicate stage. It really rests on the British government to carry out the promises that Mr Blair has made on decommissioning.
Rev Ian Paisley, DUP leader

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) leader the Rev Ian Paisley is to meet the British Prime Minister Tony Blair tomorrow.

Earlier, Mr Adams held an unprecedented meeting with PSNI chief constable, Mr Hugh Orde, while Mr Paisley met with General John de Chastelain of the Independent International Commission for Decommissioning (IICD).

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Mr Adams and Mr Orde met for just over two hours as the republican leadership pushed for commitments by security chiefs that they will remove British army lookout posts and other military apparatus.

It is one of the key demands at the centre of tense negotiations to try to hammer out an agreement which can get the power sharing executive and Assembly back up and running again in Belfast.

Mr Adams' meeting with the Chief Constable was the first time Sinn Féin has had face-to-face talks with the head of the police service in Northern Ireland.

After the meeting, Mr Adams emerged from Downing Street with a delegation which included Mr McGuinness and Ms Gildernew, insisting his party wanted a comprehensive deal.

The Sinn Féin president said: "If there is a political will there, if we can get the DUP to agree in clear terms to power-sharing, to working this Agreement with the rest of us, treating people on the basis of equality, and if we can make sure that the package that emerges is bedded in the Agreement and about implementing the Agreement, then, of course, it isn't a matter in my view of if.

"We have always felt that a deal was inevitable if we keep pushing it and we are going to keep pushing it. It is a matter of when."

Sinn Féin was stretching and challenging its supporters in a bid to secure the deal, Mr Adams said. However, he insisted others in the process needed to do that with their own constituencies too.

"It is a collective responsibility," he said. "It's a comprehensive, holistic agreement that is required and it's about putting the Good Friday Agreement in place."

Mr Paisley spent more than an hour in deep discussions with General de Chastelain on how further acts of IRA disarmament could be verified. Mr Paisley said he was not going to be held to any deadline for a final agreement.

"Things are at a very delicate stage. It really rests on the British government to carry out the promises that Mr Blair has made on decommissioning," he said

"If the decommissioning problem can be solved then we are on our way, but it is not solved at the present time.

"There is no time line as far as I am concerned, I think it is nonsense," he said.

He will meet Mr Blair in Downing Street tomorrow and said if everything was going well Mr Blair would then have to talk to General de Chastelain who, in turn, would have to talk to the IRA to see whether they would accept or reject what was being decided, he went on.

"There are a host of things that need to be settled - we have to wait and see what is going to happen."

He said some reports he had read in newspapers about what was happening were "nonsense".

The DUP wants photographic evidence of IRA decommissioning and independent scrutiny by observers.

The Rev Paisley said a particular person had been named as being acceptable to him as an observer, but he said: "I don't know the man."

The talks are at such a delicate stage that the British Prime Minister Tony Blair was reluctant to make any substantial comment at his monthly press conference for fear of scuppering a possible deal later this week.

"I think we are obviously at a very intensive stage now," he said. "I think the best thing for me is to say very little to you because we have been so many times before where hopes have been raised and then they have been dashed that I am almost fearful of raising them.

"It's obvious that people would like to get a deal done. Whether that is possible or not, the next few days will tell us but I don't think there is probably anything I can very sensibly say to you at the moment."

Devolution has been suspended in Northern Ireland since October 2002, with the Democratic Unionists arguing that republicans must abandon all paramilitary activity if they are to ever share power with Sinn Féin.