Blair and Trimble to meet

Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble was today meeting Prime Minister Tony Blair for the first time since republicans attempted to clarify a confidential IRA statement on the future of the peace process.

As the Government remained under pressure to confirm that assembly elections would take place in Northern Ireland as planned on May 29, the Upper Bann MP was expected to discuss Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams’s weekend speech aimed at clarifying the IRA position on the future direction of the peace process.

On Sunday Mr Adams tried to answer three questions posed last week to republicans by the Prime Minister on a confidential IRA statement passed to London and Dublin over a fortnight ago.

The Prime Minister asked for clarity and certainty over whether the provisionals intended to destroy all their weapons, end all paramilitary activity and declare that their arms struggle would end if the Good Friday Agreement was implemented in full.

With the British and Irish governments still withholding their blueprint on the future implementation of the Agreement, Mr Adams confirmed that the IRA’s process of disarmament would deal with all weapons and that the full implementation of the Agreement would end the conflict.

However Mr Blair was not satisfied by the West Belfast MP’s response to the third issue of whether paramilitary activity would be abandoned.

Mr Trimble dismissed Mr Adams’s response as inadequate and warned yesterday that his party would not have anything to do with the formation of another power sharing executive involving Sinn Fein unless the IRA was stood down.

As the Ulster Unionist leader travelled to Downing Street, one of his party’s Assembly election candidates insisted that the government would soon have to end uncertainty about the May 29 poll.

The Northern Ireland Office has insisted that the date of the elections has been set but the government is trying to ensure that the elections take place in a positive climate.

However UUP honorary secretary Arlene Foster called for a more definitive statement from the Government.

“We have got to have closure on this at some point,” the UUP Fermanagh and South Tyrone candidate said.

“We cannot keep having this situation of political uncertainty while the governments keep going back and forward.

“Elections must go on.

“We are prepared in the Ulster Unionist Party for those elections but there is also an onus on the Prime Minister to make it clear if we are into elections what people are voting for.

“Candidates need to know what to say to voters on the doorsteps when they ask what are they voting to.”

Northern Ireland was today entering the third day of its Assembly election campaign, with the nationalist SDLP and the cross community Alliance Party both planning candidate launches.

The Reverend Ian Paisley’s Democrat Unionists, who had their candidates launch yesterday, will transmit their first election broadcast.