Power-sharing on brink of collapse

THE North’s power-sharing Executive is on the point of collapse despite frantic attempts by the Government to rescue the peace process.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern will meet with British prime minister Tony Blair for emergency talks tonight, but sources say the fallout over a police raid on Sinn Féin's Stormont offices will be too much for the Executive to survive.

There was frantic behind-the-scenes activity yesterday to avert a suspension, but a senior Government source last night said the outlook was bleak.

"The prospect of being able to save the Assembly doesn't seem very good. If it does collapse, then the burden falls on the two governments to manage the situation going forward," the source said.

The North's power-sharing Executive, a key symbol of the peace process, has been suspended twice before.

In the vacuum created by its suspension, it is likely both governments will meet in a bid to move the process forward, while Sinn Féin will come under increasing pressure to prove its commitment to the peace process.

Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble yesterday pressed Mr Blair to expel Sinn Féin from the Assembly rather than suspend the Executive.

Mr Trimble said unless that was done, he would have no alternative but to remove his ministers from the administration.

"The Prime Minister accepts we are at a defining moment, that the time when the republicans could ride the two horses is at an end," he said.

However, it is improbable the SDLP would back such a move and it seems likely the British Government will next week suspend the institutions established under the Belfast Agreement. The peace process has been on the brink since allegations of an IRA spy network at Stormont emerged at the end of last week a charge Sinn Féin dismissed as "political theatre".

Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams yesterday insisted its members had nothing to do with intelligence gathering. He claimed the decision to raid the offices was taken by a "rump of the RUC" in the North's police force rather than the Secretary of State John Reid or the chief of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, Hugh Orde.

"This is clearly politically motivated but I think it goes further than that. I think it's a set-up. The question of who's doing the setting-up can be traced to whoever took the operational decision to raid the Sinn Féin offices," Mr Adams said.

Power-sharing was further damaged earlier yesterday when the Democratic Unionist Party's two Stormont ministers, Peter Robinson and Nigel Dodds resigned.

After a meeting with Mr Ahern in Dublin, First Minister and SDLP leader Mark Durkan said allegations of republican wrongdoing had strengthened anti-Agreement unionists and made the collapse of the institutions even more likely.