Govts to begin fresh peace talks next week

The Irish and British governments will begin new talks with all sides in the North next week in a bid to get the troubled peace process back on track.

Irrespective of today’s latest assessment on continuing IRA activity by the International Monitoring Commission, separate meetings will go ahead at Hillsborough Castle, Co Down.

Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern and Northern Secretary State Peter Hain will be involved, but with the Rev Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists ruling out an early return to a power-sharing executive in Belfast with Sinn Fein, London and Dublin are holding out little hope of any significant progress in the foreseeable future.

Today’s IMC report is expected to acknowledge there have been no acts of violence by the IRA since they declared an end to their campaign last July. But on the down side, there are expected to be claims of continuing criminality and intelligence gathering by republicans.

More worryingly, however, for Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair, it is understood the report may refer in some way to security force intelligence claims the IRA has held on to an unspecified number of shortarm weapons, even though it was meant to have destroyed its remaining stockpile of arms and explosives in September.

At the time, there were unconfirmed reports the IRA had retained some guns for their own personal protection, but it may emerge today the amount of weaponry still under the organisation’s control is higher than previously estimated.

With trust between the DUP and Sinn Féin lower than at any time since the suspension of the North's Assembly in October 2002 which followed claims of an IRA spy ring operating inside Stormont, it could be well into 2007 before there is any sort of hope of restoring devolution.

Monday’s talks, therefore, which will also involve the SDLP, the Ulster Unionists and the cross-community Alliance Party are expected to be little more than a sounding-out exercise.

As Minister Ahern and Mr Hain prepared to meet in London later today in advance of the publication of the report which they received on Monday, the DUP’s Jeffrey Donaldson claimed there would be no yielding by his side.

He said: “We will continue to hold to our position until the IRA ends all criminality, and the republican movement can be regarded as exclusively peaceful and democratic.

“There is no reason why the IRA should have the power to veto all political progress in Northern Ireland.”