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Britain, Ireland seek to tee up NIreland peace deal
2006-10-11
British and Irish leaders gather outside this famed Scottish golfing town for a last-ditch bid to get the Northern Ireland self-rule process back on course. Prime Minister Tony Blair and Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern will warn that failure to reach a deal before a November 24 deadline could leave the long-troubled province indefinitely lost in the rough. Pressure to play by the rules will notably fall on firebrand Protestant leader Ian Paisley, who has long opposed joining a government with Sinn Fein, the main Republican movement. Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said Tuesday that Paisley, head of Northern Ireland's biggest party the Democratic Unionists (DUP), has no alternative to reaching a compromise. "The question is no longer about whether the DUP will do a deal, the question is about when the DUP will do a deal," he told party faithful in a Belfast hotel on the eve of the St Andrew's talks. Under the landmark 1998 Good Friday agreement aimed at ending decades of troubles, a power-sharing self-rule assembly was set up in Stormont castle in Belfast. But the assembly was suspended in 2002 following allegations of an IRA spy ring operating at Stormont, and the province has been under direct rule from London ever since. Britain and Ireland have set a deadline of November 24 for a deal. Failing that the Stormont assembly will be dissolved indefinitely, with Northern Ireland remaining under direct rule from London. "Stormont will (be) shut up if we haven't got a deal, assembly members won't be paid and will cease to have representative rights. I'll dissolve the assembly the following week by parliamentary order," Britain's Northern Ireland Minister Peter Hain he warned Wednesday's Financial Times. Hopes for a deal were bolstered last week when the watchdog monitoring the disarmament of the Irish Republican Army (IRA) -- Sinn Fein's military wing -- said in a report that they had given up violence. Further cause for optimism came on the eve of the talks, when firebrand Protestant leader Ian Paisley held a groundbreaking meeting with the head of Ireland's Catholic Church, Archbishop of Armagh Sean Brady. Afterwards Paisley, who famously branded Pope John Paul II the Antichrist, sounded a compromising note. "I welcome the opportunity that this meeting has provided," he said. "It is in the interests of everyone to develop the foundations for stability and prosperity for all the people of Northern Ireland." But major differences remain to be resolved at this week's three-day talks. These notably include the issue of policing, which poses problems for the Sinn Fein in terms of Catholic representation in the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI). And despite his compromising tone, Paisley is unlikely to agree easily to a power-sharing deal with the Republicans. Blair's spokesman voiced confidence Tuesday that a deal is possible, if not in St Andrews then in the weeks following it, before the November deadline. "We will know by the end of the week whether a final settlement is going to be possible or not," he said. "I realise that there is any amount of detail which could trip us up. "But on the central issues of whether the Unionists are prepared to share power and whether Republicans will support policing, we believe it is a matter of how and when, not if." Paisley, in an interview with AFP last week, was in typically combative mood about the prospect of being forced into a deal by Blair. "I don't think that this present British government would have the stomach for a fight with me," he said. Muzi.com News
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