DUP ministers resign

Northern Ireland’s power-sharing Executive today headed towards collapse as the Rev Ian Paisley’s two Democratic Unionist ministers resigned.

The pressure mounted on British prime minister's Tony Blair’s Government to either suspend the devolved institution or call fresh elections as DUP ministers Peter Robinson and Nigel Dodds confirmed they had handed in letters of resignation to the Speaker of the Assembly.

Mr Paisley announced: "Today our ministers resigned to bring about an end to this farce of a process and to force the government to commence elections as soon as possible."

Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble, who is the First Minister of the Stormont Executive, was resisting pressure from the DUP to join them in a Unionist walkout today.

However, he was expected to warn the Prime Minister at a meeting in Downing Street today that if his government did not move in the Assembly to expel Sinn Fein ministers from the Executive over allegations that republicans infiltrated the Northern Ireland Office, he would seek their exclusion from government instead.

If that move was to fail, Mr Trimble is expected to then pull his ministers out of the Executive - putting pressure on Blair and Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid to suspend the Assembly and the political institutions.