Ahern and Blair urge power-sharing push

Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair are to urge Northern Ireland’s politicians to quicken the pace of restoring power-sharing during their visit to Belfast, it was confirmed tonight.

As leaders prepared for a round of meetings with Stormont Assembly parties tomorrow, sources said they would tell the Rev Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams the November 24 deadline for devolution must be met.

After six tetchy weeks since the Northern Ireland Assembly was recalled, Mr Blair and Mr Ahern will also map out a timetable for political progress ahead of the November 24 deadline.

A source said: “This was always going to be a difficult introductory period for the Assembly.

“Nevertheless there is a Preparation for Government Committee, the Whiterock Orange parade last weekend passed off peacefully when last year didn’t. It is important to recognise these as progress.

“However, if we are going to meet the November deadline then everybody needs to up the pace over the summer and into September.

“The governments will therefore be setting out how we see the timetable for September to November.”

Devolution has been suspended in Northern Ireland since October 2002, with a team of British Government ministers running the North.

During a visit to Armagh in April, Mr Blair and Mr Ahern set a November 24 deadline for the resumption of power sharing.

They also recalled the Assembly in May in the hope that parties would be able to built up trust and confidence in each other.

The Assembly, however, has been dogged by a Sinn Féin boycott of debates and by regular clashes between the party and Mr Paisley’s Democratic Unionists on a committee tasked with identifying key issues which have to be addressed before November.

Sinn Féin wants the two leaders to make it clear tomorrow to unionists that they have a clear plan to implement all other aspects of the Good Friday Agreement if the November 24 deadline for restoring devolved government is not met.

The DUP insists it will not be bounced into a government by any deadline.

Mr Paisley’s party will instead base it decision about whether or not to share power with Sinn Féin on whether the IRA has ended all violence and criminality and republicans are committed to peaceful and democratic means.

Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain warned in the House of Commons today that Assembly salaries and allowances would end if unionists and nationalists failed to deliver power sharing by the deadline.

“The conditions are now in my view clear,” he told MPs.

“There is no reason for the parties not to negotiate on the restoration of devolved government and to achieve it before the deadline of November 24 which is a deadline set in statute, set in concrete.

“If it’s not achieved, the salaries will end, the allowances will end and the financial assistance to political parties will end.

“That will all come to a stop. I don’t want to do that.

“I want to see restored self-government in Northern Ireland – elected local politicians making these kinds of decisions.”