Assembly elections in November, Ahern believes

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern believes there will be Northern Assembly elections in November, he said today.

Speaking ahead of a meeting with his British counterpart Tony Blair in Rome, Mr Ahern said: “We are coming to an end position. We have now maximum two weeks.

“The issue is whether we can get into calling an election. I very much want one.

“My belief is there will be one. I can’t be sure about that but I do believe there will be one.”

The Taoiseach was due to meet Mr Blair to review efforts to restore devolution following the Ulster Unionist executive’s rejection of the two governments’ joint declaration for implementing the Good Friday Agreement.

Mr Ahern said that a “substantive statement” was needed from the IRA in line with the principles outlined by the two leaders a year ago.

These principles demanded a statement that all IRA activity was at an end.

“We’re not being prescriptive about the words, but the principles that we enunciated this time last year and tried our best to negotiate last March and April have to be reflected in a statement that will remove the logjam,” he said.

He said the Ulster Unionist Party would have to say it would work the power-sharing executive to its full and “stop this up-down, stop-start, go-reverse that we have had“.

Devolution in Northern Ireland has been suspended since October last year when allegations of IRA spying threatened to lead to the collapse of power-sharing.

Northern Ireland is currently being ruled by a team of four ministers drawn from Westminster.

At the Labour Party conference on Thursday, Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy insisted this was “unacceptable“.

He repeated British government calls for an end to paramilitary activity by the IRA and loyalists.