NI: Ministers plan 'stocktaking exercise'

British and Irish ministers will today meet to plan their strategy for a fresh push to restore devolution in Northern Ireland.

Ulster Secretary Paul Murphy is holding his first official talks with Dermot Ahern since he was appointed Minister for Foreign Affairs.

Discussions at Hillsborough Castle, Co Down, will centre on the moves to secure total IRA disarmament and re-establishing the Stormont power-sharing regime.

Officials in Belfast stressed the two men were planning a political stock-taking exercise.

Even though Mr Murphy suffered a health scare at the Labour Party Conference, and Mr Ahern has only taken up his new brief, efforts have continued to stop the peace process shuddering to a halt.

“The momentum hasn’t stopped in the background,” one British government source said.

“There is a lot of ongoing contact between officials and the political parties.”

Mr Murphy and Mr Ahern will attempt to find a resolution that evaded the two governments during last month’s Leeds Castle summit in Kent.

Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists are demanding total IRA shut-down before agreeing to revive the Northern Ireland Assembly which was suspended two years ago over an alleged espionage plot by the Provisionals.

But further attempts to overhaul sections of the Good Friday Agreement are being fiercely resisted by Sinn Féin and the moderate nationalist SDLP.

The DUP is pressing for major changes to how the Stormont cabinet works, including ministers being more accountable to the 108-member parliament.

Amid the ongoing political wrangling, Sinn Féin chief negotiator Martin McGuinness has warned the parties have less than three weeks left to strike a peace deal.