Blair to meet Sinn Fein leaders
Sinn Fein leaders Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness today will lead a delegation to Downing Street in a bid to restart the stalled Northern Ireland peace process.
Last week, Democratic Unionist Party leader, Dr Rev Ian Paisley, said the IRA would have to submit photographs evidence before he would join Sinn Fein in government.
Sinn Fein said the photographs would be used politically to boost DUP electoral support and “humiliate” the IRA.
Mr Adams and his delegation will meet the Prime Minister before flying to Dublin for talks with Irish Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern.
Tony Blair is expected to see Mr Paisley in the coming days, although no date has been publicly set.
Mr Ahern yesterday said the peace process was within “10 hours” of a final endgame that would restore devolved government at Stormont and ensure lasting peace in the province.
He revealed the IRA had presented new proposals to the International Independent Decommissioning Commission, since last Wednesday’s failure to sign off the Anglo-Irish initiative.
“It would be an act of insanity by the whole lot of us not to see that through,” the Irish premier said
“What’s left in this, in my view, is small fry compared to what we had actually finished last Wednesday.
“Really it just requires a bit of cool nerves, a bit of straight negotiation on very few issues, a few chances to be taken, nobody likes the bits that are outstanding but if we all do it collectively, this can be finished.
“There’s not 10 hours of work left in this having had…a year where we must have spent thousands of hours on it.”
Meanwhile, in a radio interview on Sunday, Dr Paisley said he was ready to discuss the question of “sin” with Mr Adams.
“If Mr Adams wants to hear me preach, he is welcome. The doors of Martyrs’ Memorial Church are open to him. He can hear me preach at any time,” the veteran politician said.
“If he came into this room and said ‘I would like to talk to you, Ian, about sin and how you get rid of it, about what the Gospel is’, I would talk to him.
“But that is not political. Negotiations on the future government of the country is entirely different.”
In reply, Mid Ulster MP Martin McGuinness said he was willing to take up the offer.
“I am prepared, and I know Gerry would be willing, to meet Ian on the issue of sin if it helped to break the ice.”
“It is very much Sinn Fein’s view that one of the difficulties in the current process is that we have not Ian and Peter Robinson sitting across the table to talk to the likes of Gerry and myself.”
