The British and Irish governments yesterday urged all involved in the multi-party talks to push ahead with negotiations after publishing a joint paper they described as their "best assessment" for agreement on Strands Two and Three.
At a joint press conference in Lancaster House, London, the Northern Ireland Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, attempted to calm unionist anger at the proposals by insisting that they were not "set in stone" and did not represent a predetermined outcome.
Dr Mowlam said that the proposals covering Strand Two (the relationship between Belfast and Dublin) and Strand Three (the relationship between London and Dublin) represented the two governments' "best assessment" of the possibilities for a lasting settlement in Northern Ireland.
The paper made it clear that the two governments were firmly committed to the Framework Document, Dr Mowlam said. That commitment was set out in paragraph three of the paper on Strand Two, namely that North-South bodies would involve "interlocking and mutually supportive institutions".
Rejecting the Ulster Unionists' description of the paper as "irrelevant", Mr Andrews said he believed the parties had moved into the "real meat" of the negotiations. He urged the participants to move ahead with negotiations "quickly and urgently", saying that they would have to look behind the words and labels of each party and concentrate their minds on the core issues, among them the creation of "strong and meaningful" North-South structures.
In a reference to the dispute between the UUP and the SDLP over the paper, Dr Mowlam said: "The ball is now firmly in the parties' court." While she had "taken heart" from Sinn Fein's positive response to the paper, she was more interested in the parties coming together to actively discuss the detail of the document.