Ahern and Trimble to hold Dublin crisis talks

Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble is to hold crisis peace process talks with the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern today in Dublin.

Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble is to hold crisis peace process talks with Taoiseach Bertie Ahern today in Dublin.

The Upper Bann MP is travelling to Dublin with Northern Ireland’s Acting First Minister Reg Empey as the party prepares to expel Sinn Fein from the Northern Ireland's power sharing government.

A Democratic Unionist Party-led motion in the Stormont Assembly to expel Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness and Bairbre de Brun yesterday received the required 30 signatures of MLAs for it to be debated after Ulster Unionist Pauline Armitage backed it.

Mr Trimble had been planning his own motion calling for the Education and Health Ministers to be removed from office because of the IRA’s failure to disarm and the arrests of three Irish Republicans in Colombia on suspicion of training left-wing FARC rebels.

A UUP spokesman today said the party’s second visit to Dublin in a week was designed to explain ‘‘the reasons behind our moves to exclude Sinn Fein from the Northern Ireland executive because of the continuing failure of the IRA to decommission its illegal weaponry’’.

The party delegation was also due to meet opposition leaders, Michael Noonan of Fine Gael and Ruairi Quinn of Labour as well as the British Ambassador to Ireland, Ivor Roberts, US Ambassador Richard Egan and senior editorial figures in the Dublin newspapers.

The meeting with Mr Egan follows hard on criticism of him by Reg Empey in the Stormont Assembly over his decision to attend the Sinn Fein party conference in Dublin on Saturday for Gerry Adams’ leader’s speech.

During First and Deputy First Minister’s Questions yesterday, Reg queried whether it was wise for the US diplomat to attend given the stance of his President George Bush over international terrorism.

‘‘It amazes me, to be perfectly honest, how the diplomat concerned is going to be able to square that with the President’s onslaught on international terrorism,’’ he said.

Representatives from the Basque separatist group ETA’s political wing, the Batasuna Party, the Palestinian authority’s representative in Ireland and an ANC MP also attended the two-day event.

Democratic Unionist MLA Sammy Wilson claimed local paramilitary groupings as well as international terrorism has brought economic instability to Ulster.

The East Belfast MLA said: ‘‘While the government of the United States has been declaring war on terrorists the US Ambassador to Dublin attended the annual conference of IRA terrorists at which there were specifically invited the political representatives of a number of international groups which his government supposedly has declared war on.’’

Empey stressed there was no fundamental difference between an attack on the World Trade Centre, Canary Wharf in London, or Belfast’s Great Victoria Street.

‘‘There now appears to be a sort of artificial differentiation between terrorism and international terrorism,’’ he said.

The minister pointed out that a significant amount of the arsenal used by paramilitary groupings during the Troubles either came from the US or was financed by American fund-raising efforts.

He added: ‘‘I will be looking forward with interest as to how that particular circle is to be squared.

‘‘When one of the resolutions passed at that conference specifically castigated the United States Government for its involvement in Colombia I found that one very hard to figure out.’’

Meanwhile the Conservatives’ Northern Ireland spokesman, Quentin Davies, today is travelling to Holy Cross Primary School in north Belfast to meet staff about the loyalist pickets of the past five weeks.