Taoiseach to meet Blair and Mitchell today

The Taoiseach will meet the British Prime Minister and Senator George Mitchell in Downing Street this afternoon, hoping to learn that Mr Mitchell is prepared to commit himself to up to three weeks of talks with the Northern parties in September.

Mr Ahern, who met the Sinn Fein leadership in Dublin yesterday and will see the Ulster Unionist Party leader, Mr David Trimble, in London before heading for Downing Street, also hopes to hear that the senator will meet the parties once or twice before the end of this month, in preparation for the review of the Belfast Agreement's implementation.

A Government spokesman said yesterday's 90-minute meeting with Mr Gerry Adams and Mr Martin McGuinness had been "valuable in terms of taking stock of where we are in advance of the review".

Speaking afterwards, Mr Adams said he had asked the Taoiseach to ensure that the review process was as short as possible. "The unionist stance has been to delay the process, and therefore a lengthy review suits the unionists' stalling and delaying tactics," he said.

He added that the target of the review should be the thing which necessitated it in the first place: "the unionists' refusal to start the transfer of power". The process should be "very, very short and very, very focused", he said.

Asked about comments by the Taoiseach that the May 2000 deadline for decommissioning could now be an issue for republicans, who could point to the procrastination of others, Mr Adams said that the Ulster Unionist Party's stance had made it "virtually impossible for the rest of us to tackle this in terms of the Good Friday agreement".

Earlier, in response to the controversy which had arisen over the comments in a Sunday radio interview, the Taoiseach's spokesman said Mr Ahern had made clear in the interview that the review "should start from the three principles agreed by the two governments and the pro-agreement parties in Castle Buildings on 25th June".

These were: an inclusive executive exercising devolved powers, decommissioning of all paramilitary arms by May 2000, and decommissioning to be carried out in a manner determined by the International Commission on Decommissioning.

"This is his view as stated yesterday and the view he will be putting to the prime minister tomorrow," Mr Ahern's spokesman said.