Taoiseach encourages Northern leaders to make `final push'

The Taoiseach gave his strongest signal to Northern party leaders last night that he expected them to meet the April 2nd deadline for the full implementation of all institutions encompassed in the Belfast Agreement.

Saying that he did not accept that "nothing is happening in Washington", Mr Ahern declared: "This time last year we were dealing with 40 difficulties: now we are dealing with one difficulty. We have to see if we can overcome that, and I think everybody wants to, quite frankly."

He said that he would not like to go beyond the deadline of the first anniversary of signing the Agreement, but the reality was that they had a problem to deal with. He was quite happy, coming to Washington, that they had managed to complete so many other issues.

Having isolated the relationship between IRA decommissioning and the setting up of the Northern Executive as the one remaining difficulty, Mr Ahern exhorted the participants: "It is fairly well down to the wire of the remaining issues to get things going. We have to see if we can make a final push to get a resolution of this."

Claiming that they were all in Washington to do this, the Taoiseach said that President Clinton - whom he will meet in the White House today - saw his role as giving encouragement "to find a way out".

He said he would tell the president that the negotiations now had a huge prize for everybody. It had to be absolutely clear that if they could find a way of resolving decommissioning, then there could be no obstacles, nor more pulling and dragging. They would move fully into all aspects of the agreement.

Asked if he thought that this would happen within the next 21/2 weeks, Mr Ahern responded: "I think it will. I'd like to be clear in my mind how, I have plenty of ideas but a fair few of them have hit sand over the last few weeks."

He said: "I have spent hours talking to Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionist Party, to Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and David Trimble, and it doesn't seem either of them has much room to manoeuvre. In terms of who has the most, it depends on which day it was. It swings up and down but, within whatever room there is to manoeuvre, we have to find a resolution. Otherwise, all the good work is lost."

Stressing the importance of the Washington meetings, Mr Ahern said the fact that all the key players - the Attorney General talking to legal people - were all directly engaging on the issue was "massive". He thought this week was very significant and from talking usually people found solutions, "even if they have to shout at one another for a while".

In a busy programme yesterday the Taoiseach had a breakfast meeting with the US Secretary of State, Ms Madeleine Albright, where the situations in Kosovo, China, the Middle East and a range of international issues, such as the trade war in bananas, were discussed. They also discussed Ireland's impending membership of Partnership for Peace.

He had a meeting with Senators Edward Kennedy and Chris Dodd and with the congressional Friends of Ireland on Capitol Hill.

Following his meeting with Senator Kennedy yesterday, the First Minister, Mr Trimble, said that he was quite certain of the current direction of events. "I am quite sure that there is no other way for things to proceed. It is not a question, in my mind, of whether, but it is a question of when."