Assembly elections in balance - Trimble
Tony Blair must make a decision soon on whether to restore devolved institutions in Northern Ireland if the planned elections to the Stormont Assembly are to go ahead, Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble said today.
Speaking after an hour-long meeting with the British Prime Minister at 10 Downing Street, Mr Trimble said it was “increasingly problematic” whether the elections scheduled for May can go ahead.
It was questionable whether there was any point holding an election to an institution which was suspended, he said.
Mr Trimble this morning asked the Sinn Fein leadership for talks on what steps the republican movement might make to end the current crisis in the peace process.
He said the UUP wanted to see not only acts of decommissioning by the IRA, but also assurances that the organisation will disband and paramilitaries will end “all violent and illegal activities”.
Today’s Downing Street talks came as Ian Paisley’s hard-line Democratic Unionists held out the prospect of the party cutting a deal with Sinn Fein.
William Hay, a DUP Assembly member, said if republicans gave certain guarantees, the DUP would be prepared to “sit down and do business with them like any other constitutional party”.
