Stormont elections - Time to end stalling by unionists

Peter Hain, the Northern Secretary, yesterday threatened to cancel the next Stormont elections if unionist and republican politicians do not form a power-sharing government in the coming year.

He urged both sides to make a concerted effort to restore devolution in 2006. Otherwise, he said, it would be pointless to go ahead with the elections planned to be held in 2007.

The Northern Secretary is due to meet Foreign Affairs Minister Dermot Ahern early in the New Year to discuss strategy to revive the power-sharing executive and assembly, set up under the Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

The executive and assembly were suspended three years ago amid allegations of IRA spying at Stormont. In fact, the main spy was a double agent spying for the British.

Unionist stalling over power-sharing goes back much further than the past three years. It figured prominently as one of the main issues in the State Papers released this week concerning the events of 1975. The convention set up then collapsed over power-sharing and the Irish dimension.

During the 1980s, Ian Paisley led the ultimately futile resistance to the Irish dimension that was fundamental to the Hillsborough Agreement. Not only the people of the island as a whole, but along with them the vast majority in Northern Ireland accepted the Good Friday Agreement.

If Mr Paisley and his colleagues are to have any credibility in their claim to being democrats, they must try to implement the Good Friday Agreement. The IRA has decommissioned their weapons, and the unionists must now demonstrate their sincerity after more than 30 years of procrastination.