‘Pro-agreement parties must sit down together’

ALL pro-agreement parties must immediately sit down together to consider how the Joint Declaration can best be furthered, said SDLP leader Mark Durkan.

Speaking after a round of meetings with party leaders in Dublin yesterday, Mr Durkan also said he believed British Prime Minister Tony Blair had made a grave mistake by postponing Assembly elections last week.

“He has actually punctuated a process which was making progress, albeit tortured slow progress,” he said, adding that any progress made in Northern Ireland was in danger of being lost in the predicted political void. “There needs to be something more solid than choreography and wordplay. In a couple of weeks we will have the fifth anniversary of what should be a landmark of Irish democracy, the referendum that gave us the agreement,” he said. “Right now people are not sure what is going on and where all the parties stand. Let them sit down publicly so everybody can see where they stand, so people know who’s willing to move.”