No progress reported after Ahern-Blair talks

Yesterday's high-level meetings at Hillsborough Castle appear to have made little progress in efforts to restore the suspended Northern institutions.

The Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair spent five hours meeting the various political parties and expressed optimism following the meetings.

However, both the Ulster Unionist Party and Sinn Fein have decried the lack of progress and have not changed their respective stances regarding the current crisis.

"We have indicated the range of issues and we would have expected to see some evidence that there is a response," Sinn Fein chairman Mitchel McLaughlin said.

"If there are ideas there, if people have formulations, they didn't set them on the table."

UUP leader David Trimble, meanwhile, repeated his view that only action and not words from the IRA can lift the North out of the political impasse.

"I would query the question of whether a statement can be efficacious," he said. "In May 2000, the IRA made undertakings to us and they haven't kept them."

The Taoiseach and the British Prime Minister have agreed to meet again on March 3 to assess the extent of any progress that is made in the coming three weeks. Both men are hoping that the broad details of a solution can be negotiated during that period.

Speaking after yesterday's talks, they said everybody knows that the IRA will have to end all paramilitary activity if Sinn Fein hopes to resume sharing power with unionists. They also acknowledged that Britain has an outstanding duty to implement the policing, demilitarisation, equality and human rights commitments contained in the Good Friday Agreement.

"What we're doing at the moment is facing people up to what 'acts of completion' means," Mr Blair said. "Over the next few weeks, we'll find out whether our view of what those acts are and what they mean is the same as everyone else's."

Mr Ahern also predicted progress in the coming weeks. "Me and my colleagues will do all we can over the next three weeks or so to build on the discussions and try to implement the outstanding issues so that we can continue to make the excellent progress that we have made over the last number of years," he said.