Ahern for Belfast meetings on policy areas

The Taoiseach will travel to Belfast on Monday in an effort to get agreement on the policy areas to be covered by six new North-South implementation bodies.

This follows the failure of the Northern parties to meet today's date for the establishment of the bodies, the first deadline in the Belfast Agreement.

Mr Ahern, who will be accompanied by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, and the Minister of State, Ms Liz O'Donnell, plans to have roundtable talks with all the parties when he arrives in Stormont at 3.30 p.m. He will have bilateral meetings later in the day.

The prospect of Mr Ahern getting directly involved in the negotiations was raised during his meeting with the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, in Austria last Saturday.

The Taoiseach spoke to the First Minister-designate, Mr David Trimble, on Monday, when it was agreed that if they were making progress on the NorthSouth bodies and he was required to go up "to give the process some momentum", he would be prepared to do so. He spoke to the deputy First Minister, Mr Seamus Mallon, and Mr Gerry Adams later in the week.

Mr Blair is not going to Belfast because the North-South dimension of the pact involves the governments North and South, not the British government.

The focus of Mr Ahern's intervention on Monday will be to get a decision on the policy areas to be covered by the bodies. Twelve such areas, which include aspects of agriculture, transport, tourism and relevant EU programmes, were listed in the Belfast Agreement as possible "areas for NorthSouth co-operation and implementation".

Setting out his position on the North-South bodies in an address to the IBEC-CBI joint business council on Thursday, Mr Ahern stressed that "serious co-operation in serious areas of the economy, not footling co-operation in marginal areas" was required.

Government sources indicated last night that the Taoiseach did not expect to agree the topics to be devolved to North-South bodies on Monday.

In the event of securing agreement the Dail will be required to enact legislation to devolve powers to the new bodies.

Furthermore, the Taoiseach's priority is to bring the bodies to the point of establishment. Government sources insist that the bodies cannot be set up until ministers are appointed in Northern Ireland in a new executive.