Deadlock may spark new Assembly elections

Northern Ireland could be facing fresh Assembly elections if the DUP and Sinn Féin fail to reach agreement on a peace deal, it emerged today.

Northern Secretary Paul Murphy admitted the option of restoring the Stormont Assembly had not been ruled out.

“If after six weeks, the parties in the Assembly can’t come up with an executive, can’t come up with a First Minister and a Deputy First Minister, then they are required to go back to the people for another election,” he said.

“It is something which I doubt the people in Northern Ireland will particularly want, because they have only just elected an assembly, but it is an option the parties and the (British) government can discuss in the months ahead.”

Hopes of a revival of the North’s political institutions were shattered last week when a comprehensive peace deal unravelled at the 11th hour.

The settlement foundered on the IRA’s resistance to its weapons’ destruction being photographed, but both the British and Irish governments have pledged to keep trying to resolve this final issue before Christmas.

The IRA broke its silence to accuse Democratic Unionist leader, Ian Paisley, of attempting to humiliate it over impossible demands for visual proof of decommissioning.

As he prepared for a fresh round of talks in continued attempts to break the political impasse, Mr Murphy said the transparency issue must be addressed.

“It’s not photographs for photographs sake, it’s transparency for confidence sake,” he told BBC Radio Ulster. “We need to concentrate all our efforts on that issue.”

The governments’ proposals involved the pictures being taken but not published until the Executive was up and running.

Mr Murphy said the way forward had to be based on compromise and must be transparent without being triumphalist.

But as London and Dublin work to plot a way out of the deadlock, tensions flared again when the Progressive Democrats claimed the IRA had refused to end all criminal activity.

The minority coalition partner refused to back any deal without specific commitments from the IRA.

Sinn Féin President Gerry Adams accused the party of being politically opportunistic and insisted IRA volunteers had been instructed not to engage in any kind of activity that would endanger the peace process.

He said the controversial issue of early release for the killers of Detective Garda Jerry McCabe’s must be addressed if hopes of a breakthrough are to be kept alive.

The West Belfast MP told The Late Late Show it was not a case of selling out to killers, nor of the Government letting people down.

Garda McCabe was shot dead in a hail of bullets during a botched post office raid in Adare, Co Limerick, in November 1996. Four IRA members were convicted of manslaughter and are serving jail terms ranging from 11 to 14 years.

Mr Adams has also called on Mr Paisley, his political enemy, to break his policy of not talking to republicans, for the sake of peace.