AP News, March 15th, 2007
Prime Minister Tony Blair met with the leaders of Northern Ireland's hard-line Protestant and Catholic parties Wednesday to press for the formation of a joint administration in the territory by a late March deadline.
Ian Paisley, the Protestant leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, has refused to commit to Blair's deadline to join forces with the Catholic Sinn Fein party, citing Sinn Fein's continued ambiguity on whether it will cooperate fully with the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
In recent weeks, Sinn Fein leaders have called on Catholics to help police solve crimes, but suggested they will not help stop attacks by dissidents opposed to the peace process.
At stake is the central aim of the landmark Good Friday deal: an administration drawn equally from the British Protestant majority and Irish Catholic minority that can govern Northern Ireland in a spirit of compromise.
The Democratic Unionists and Sinn Fein were the twin victors of last week's assembly election in the British territory. The Democratic Unionists won 36 seats in the 108-member legislature, while Sinn Fein won 28, crushing their moderate rivals.
Blair met separately Wednesday with both Paisley and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams to discuss the impasse over forming the joint administration. Blair's Treasury chief and likely successor, Gordon Brown, also took part in the talks.
Blair insists that if Paisley refuses to sit down at the Cabinet table by March 26, he will order the fledgling Northern Ireland Assembly _ the legislature with the power to form an administration _ dissolved the next day. In that scenario, Britain would offer a greater Northern Ireland role to the Irish government, a move that Protestants oppose.
"Everybody realizes that we are serious about the 26th, and therefore a decision has to be made," Blair's official spokesman said Wednesday on customary condition of anonymity.
Democratic Unionist deputy leader Peter Robinson, who also took part in the talks, stressed afterward that his party would not move unless Sinn Fein demonstrated support for law and order.
"Mr. Adams knows the requirements. He knows what has to be done, and he knows he is not yet doing them," Robinson said. Paisley did not speak to reporters after his meetings.
But Adams said the British government accepted that Sinn Fein had done enough to merit a share of power. Adams said he, Blair and Brown all sensed that a breakthrough with Paisley was imminent.
"I do think that this British government ... they can smell it, that this could be the real breakthrough after all the conflict, after all the false dawns," Adams said.
Both the Democratic Unionists and Sinn Fein agree on the other key condition for cooperation _ getting more money from Britain, which already heavily subsidizes Northern Ireland.
Paisley is seeking a reported $2 billion in extra funds for any incoming power-sharing administration. Both Adams and Paisley say they would use extra money to reverse a new household water tax due to be imposed starting next month across Northern Ireland.
Britain has committed to the idea of providing a "peace dividend" of extra money if a joint administration takes root.
The previous, moderate-led coalition in Northern Ireland collapsed in 2002 amid a spying scandal involving Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army. Protestant voters then turned to Paisley, who demanded that the IRA disappear and Sinn Fein accept law and order.
The IRA disarmed in 2005 and pledged never to resume trying to remove Northern Ireland from the United Kingdom by force, a campaign that claimed nearly 1,800 lives from 1970 to 1997. Sinn Fein in January also voted to abandon its decades-old policy of hostility to the Northern Ireland police.
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Associated Press Writer Shawn Pogatchnik in Dublin, Ireland, contributed to this report.
