Adams warns DUP over Assembly revival plans
Mr Adams said after a meeting with the Parades Commission in Belfast city centre about the marching season that the DUP would have to engage with his party if there was to be progress in the political process.
The West Belfast MP also dismissed reports that the DUP wants the IRA to demonstrate over a six-month period their peaceful intentions before they would consider sharing power with Sinn Féin.
“I have made it very clear that the terms as we know it that the DUP have publicly expressed are not acceptable,” said Mr Adams.
“How could they be acceptable? We have just refreshed our mandate. We respect the DUP’s mandate.
“These ideas of being decontaminated or being tested or being verified, those have long since passed.
“What we need to do is to crunch in a comprehensive way all of the elements involved and then implement what we agree in a practical and an urgent and an expeditious way as is possible.” Northern politicians have been told by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern to expect an intensive push to restore devolution in the autumn.
However, if the talks fail in September to revive the Stormont Assembly, both governments have warned that they may have to look at the continuation of Assembly members’ salaries and at other ways to secure agreement between the parties.
Mr Adams, who earlier yesterday met US President George W Bush’s special envoy to Northern Ireland Ambassador Mitchell Reiss, criticised the failure of the DUP to get right down to the process of securing a deal during the summer. “The DUP at this moment are on their holidays,” the Sinn Féin leader said.
“That is where the DUP are. Will there be a deal done eventually with the DUP? Will they talk to us eventually?
“Of course they will, but they cannot be allowed by the governments to do it on their time frame or on their timescale.”
After his party’s meeting with Mr Reiss, SDLP negotiator Seán Farren warned both governments against a form of rolling devolution or deep suspension if efforts to break the political deadlock failed.
Mr Farren said: “the SDLP hopes that the DUP and Sinn Féin will live up to the Agreement and that the September deadline will be met.
“But to give the deadline credibility, the governments need to make clear what exactly will happen if it is broken. If we don’t get a breakthrough in September, the two governments must not opt for rolling devolution. That is a failed unionist policy tried by the British Government in 1982.
“Nor should the governments put the Agreement into deep suspension. That would effectively close down politics here.” He also ruled out the DUP’s plan for restoring devolution.
