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Date Posted: 00:08:16 03/13/04 Sat GMT
Author: Lynn
Subject: Britain, Ireland plan to step up talks (NYNewsday)

Britain, Ireland Plan to Step Up Talks
By SHAWN POGATCHNIK
Associated Press Writer

March 12, 2004, 12:10 AM EST

DUBLIN, Ireland -- Britain and Ireland plan to intensify negotiations on reviving power-sharing in Northern Ireland, but progress depends on the Irish Republican Army, the prime ministers of both countries agreed at a summit here Thursday.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair met his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, to discuss ways to advance negotiations in Belfast. Those talks have made no progress, largely because of Protestant opposition to sharing power with Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party.
Ahern and Blair, standing side by side, said they would press for quick progress in the third week of March, when politicians return from St. Patrick's Day-related events in the United States.
They stressed that the key to a breakthrough would be getting the outlawed IRA to demonstrate its peaceful intentions through actions such as ending recruitment and halting intelligence-gathering on potential targets.
It would also mean the IRA's total disarmament, a process begun in October 2001 but on hold since October 2002, when a power-sharing administration formed under terms of Northern Ireland's 1998 peace accord fell apart.
Blair emphasized that neither of Northern Ireland's British Protestant parties, the hard-line Democratic Unionists and moderate Ulster Unionists, were willing to work with Sinn Fein until the IRA went out of business.
"If there's an end to paramilitarism they are prepared to be in government" with Sinn Fein, Blair said.
Both leaders stressed they needed a positive result from the Belfast talks and weren't prepared to let them be paralyzed for months by Protestant suspicions of Sinn Fein and the IRA.
Legislative elections last November intended to revive power-sharing instead gave majority positions to Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists and Sinn Fein, an extremely difficult combination for a working coalition.
"The elections were in November, this is March, we must move on," said Ahern.
The IRA killed about 1,800 people from 1970 to 1997 in a failed campaign to abolish Northern Ireland as British territory.

Copyright © 2004, The Associated Press

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