Ulster government 'on brink of collapse'
Northern Ireland’s power-sharing government was teetering on the brink of collapse tonight, as British Prime Minister Tony Blair summoned Sinn Fein leaders to Downing Street for crisis talks this week.
As Sinn Fein’s head of administration Denis Donaldson prepared to appear at a special sitting of Belfast Magistrates’ Court over the alleged infiltration of the Northern Ireland Office by republicans, relations between the key players in the province’s peace process soured dramatically.
Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble was reported tonight to be on the verge of pulling down the power-sharing government involving Sinn Fein, as his party expressed doubts about republican intentions towards the peace process.
Meanwhile, Sinn Fein and the British Government clashed tonight over the cancellation of a meeting between the party and Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid.
NIO officials insisted the meeting was called off because the Prime Minister was seeking urgent talks with Sinn Fein to discuss the arrests of four people and raids on republican homes in Belfast last Friday.
However, a furious Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams hit back, accusing Northern Dr Reid of acting in a “juvenile” fashion.
The West Belfast MP argued: “At a time when there is a real and urgent need to manage the fall-out of recent events, and when the British Secretary of State has questions to answer, his cancellation of the meeting which we had scheduled tomorrow will further undermine that and republican confidence.
“I find his behaviour juvenile and incomprehensible.”
Earlier, Dr Reid had called on republicans to reassure other players in the peace process that they would abandon all paramilitary activity for good.
“I think we are at a stage which is not only serious or grave, as the Taoiseach said in the last three days,” he declared.
“I think this is at a critical stage.
“Somehow we have to have an assurance that if these things have happened in the past, they will happen no longer.
“Now we have never had a signal of that nature. The IRA has never been prepared to say the war is over, or that their army is being stood down.
“We have come a huge way in terms of the ceasefire. There have been no attacks on the police or the (British) Army, no planting of bombs, but the constant drip-feed of allegations that the maintenance of the apparatus of terror is being carried on is undermining hugely the confidence in this (Good Friday) Agreement.”
Sinn Fein Education Minister Martin McGuinness also hit back, insisting Dr Reid had questions to answer about events in the peace process since Friday.
“When we meet Mr Blair, we will be asking straightforward questions of the British Government. Was the Speaker of the Northern Ireland Assembly told of the bogus raid on the Sinn Fein office at Stormont, because everybody knows that there was nothing found in the Sinn Fein offices?
“Did the First Minister (Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble) know? Did the Deputy First Minister (nationalist SDLP leader Mark Durkan) know?
“At what operational level was the decision to raid our office taken?”
As the Reverend Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists threatened not to participate in normal Assembly business until a motion to dissolve Stormont was debated, SDLP leader Mark Durkan appealed for calm.
Insisting he knew nothing in advance of the raid on Sinn Fein’s offices, he acknowledged: “We have a serious crisis and we must not make it a historic disaster.
“In circumstances where we do not know what is or is not involved, there should be no rash actions which cannot be recovered.”
