Cowen and Brown head for emergency Belfast talks

Taoiseach Brian Cowen and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown will travel to Belfast this afternoon for emergency talks with the North's political leaders, they announced today after talks at Downing Street.

The two leaders are flying to the North as fears mount that the fragile power sharing institutions could collapse over the ongoing row between Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionists about the stalled devolution of law and order powers.

“We believe that the problems that exist in devolving policing and justice are soluble problems,” Mr Brown said after meeting Mr Cowen at Downing Street.

“We believe it is right for Northern Ireland to move forward in this way and we believe that together we can assist in the completion of these talks.”

Speaking later as they emerged from talks which lasted around 90 minutes, Mr Brown said the visit had been planned in conversations between the two leaders yesterday.

“While I recognise that there are difficult issues, we believe that these issues can be overcome. So we will together go to Northern Ireland and talk to Mr Robinson and Mr McGuinness and talk to other parties in Northern Ireland and we believe there is a chance that progress will be made.”

Mr Cowen said the pair believed their visit “should help bring a conclusion to the devolution issues”.

Asked whether they could set a date for the devolution of the issues, Mr Cowen said: “There is no doubt that we need to resolve this matter in a way that would assure that devolution of policing and justice would take place in a specified period.

“We believe that with goodwill and determination and good faith on all sides it should be possible. We believe the outstanding issues are resolvable.”

Posed the same question, Mr Brown replied: “We are going to be talking to people this afternoon about all the issues and I believe that the end product will be that devolution of policing and justice will take place.”