Blair to meet Northern Ireland leaders
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is to meet the Rev Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams later this week to assess the chances of a return to devolution in Northern Ireland, it emerged tonight.
Mr Blair’s talks with Mr Adams in Downing Street on Thursday will be his first with the Sinn Féin leader since the IRA embarked on an internal debate about abandoning armed struggle for purely democratic means.
Talks have, however, been going on between the British Government and Sinn Féin officials since Mr Blair told the West Belfast MP at their last meeting in Chequers in January there could be no inclusive politics in Northern Ireland while the IRA remained active.
Following British election successes which saw Sinn Féin gain one MP and 18 council seats in Northern Ireland, Mr Adams said the vote had been an endorsement of his appeal to the Provisionals to consider embracing the democratic alternative.
At the launch of his party’s campaign against the EU Constitution in Dublin the West Belfast MP said: “In this the final phase of Tony Blair’s premiership, we have a very unique opportunity to sort out all of these matters. But it needs a collective push to move it forward.
“Mr Blair has been very good on some of these core issues.
“It is my view that he wants to bed them down. He wants it to be part of his legacy and therefore there is a relatively limited time, the time to bed it down is now.”
Democratic Unionist sources said the party would press the British Prime Minister on Thursday not to wait for republicans to embrace democracy but to move quickly instead to form a devolved government at Stormont which freezes Sinn Féin out of ministerial posts.
But they will also insist Mr Blair should acknowledge their electoral successes by granting them House of Lords seats for the first time.
“It is quite ridiculous that you have a situation where the DUP has nine MPs now and no-one in the Lords while the UUP has been reduced to just one MP with eight peers.”
“This is an issue the party feels very strongly about and the (British) government will have to recognise the strength of our mandate.”
In the British general election the DUP gained three seats from the rival Ulster Unionists, including David Trimble’s, which also lost a seat to the nationalist SDLP.
The DUP would like to form a voluntary coalition with Mark Durkan’s SDLP which excludes Sinn Féin.
However Mr Durkan, who comfortably held on to his party’s Westminster seat in Foyle at the election, has refused to entertain any changes to the system of devolved government which includes Sinn Féin.
During a speech to Derry’s Chamber of Commerce in the heart of Mr Durkan’s constituency, DUP negotiator Jeffrey Donaldson rebuked the SDLP leader.
“The SDLP criticise the DUP on the issue of power sharing but it is in fact they who refuse our offer to share power,” the Lagan valley MP said.
“When will Mark Durkan step out from the shadows of Sinn Féin and stop giving terrorists a veto?”
This Thursday’s meetings will follow the visit to Belfast this week of US President George W Bush’s special envoy to Northern Ireland, Ambassador Mitchell Reiss.
New Northern Ireland and Welsh Secretary Peter Hain is due to meet Ambassador Reiss in London.
He will hold his first talks since taking over at Stormont with Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and the Republic’s Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern in Dublin.
