The sooner the IRA makes a statement on its future intentions, the sooner normal politics can operate in Northern Ireland, Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern said while on a visit to Belfast yesterday.
Mr Ahern also discussed the issue of parades and expressed the hope that the accommodation reached in Derry between Orangemen and local nationalist representatives over the Orange Order's Twelfth of July parade in the city could serve as a model for resolving other contentious marches.
With Taoiseach Bertie Ahern suggesting that the IRA statement on whether or not it will fully embrace peace and democracy could come by the end of the month, the Minister said a positive and quick announcement would facilitate "real politics and bring benefit to all our people on both sides of the Border".
In the meantime, the British and Irish governments would work together to implement the Belfast Agreement. "Politics will go on, and that's why the British and Irish governments met last Monday, that's why I am here [in Belfast], that's why there will be a continuation of movement right across all the issues that were in the Good Friday agreement that we can deal with," Mr Ahern said.
He was delighted with the agreement on the Twelfth parade in Derry, he added. "We just hope and pray that the good grace and the understanding that was created in Derry will continue over the next two weeks."
The Minister yesterday met the PSNI Chief Constable Hugh Orde, members of the Policing Board, the Police Ombudsman Nuala O'Loan, new Ulster Unionist Party leader Sir Reg Empey and party colleagues, and SDLP Assembly members.
Sir Reg described their one-hour meeting as constructive and said they would meet again in September.
"At the meeting I made it clear that irrespective of what the IRA say in any imminent statement the UUP and the unionist community will judge them on their actions not their words.
"The people of Northern Ireland must see with their own eyes that the dark days of IRA violence, criminality and terrorism are gone for ever. We have been waiting over eight years for the provisional movement led by Adams and McGuinness to do this and to commit to exclusively peaceful and democratic means. We are all tired of waiting."
