US peace envoy to meet North's parties

US President George W Bush’s new adviser on Northern Ireland is to meet parties next week as they embark on a review of the Good Friday Agreement.

Mitchell Reiss, who was announced last December as the replacement for Ambassador Richard Haass, is expected to be ratified this weekend as the President’s new peace process envoy.

He is due to arrive in Belfast on Monday where he will meet politicians taking part in the review of the 1998 peace accord which begins next Tuesday.

US officials insist Dr Reiss will be “in a listening mode”.

The review will be chaired jointly by British and Irish ministers and will involve all parties elected to the Northern Ireland Assembly last November.

The Rev Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists are hoping to secure radical changes to the Agreement during the process which could last until Easter.

The party wants a smaller Assembly, less government departments at Stormont and major changes to the way Northern Ireland is ruled under devolution.

The cross community Alliance Party is also proposing radical reforms, including changes to the Assembly’s voting system.

However, Sinn Féin and the nationalist SDLP have insisted the review should not be treated as a rengotiation of the Agreement.

Both parties have called on London and Dublin to signal to the DUP that the Agreement will not be altered by pressing ahead with commitments they made in the Agreement and last year’s joint declaration.

Dr Reiss has extensive experience on nuclear disarmament and replaced Ambassador Haass as Director of Policy Planning at the State Department last year.

He has held a number of top academic posts and has published widely in the field of international affairs and arms control.

Having spent time working with the North Korean government on nuclear disarmament, he is expected to focus on the issues of paramilitary decommissioning and attempts to restore the power-sharing administration at Stormont.

Dr Haass left the US government to take up a post with a top New York-based foreign policy think tank.

Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams became the first Northern Ireland leader to meet Dr Reiss during a visit to Washington last week.