British prime minister Tony Blair sought to calm unionist anger yesterday while pushing ahead in the peace process with Sinn Féin on foot of last week's IRA statement formally ending its armed campaign.
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams emerged from talks with Mr Blair in Downing Street warning DUP leader the Rev Ian Paisley that he would eventually have to respond to an "emerging new reality". Following last week's "momentous" IRA decision, Mr Adams said "the buzz word at this time has to be momentum". And he suggested the DUP leader could either join Sinn Féin and others "in building the process, or stand aside and let the rest of us get on with it".
Mr Blair subsequently appeared to balance this with a reminder to republicans that it was they, and not him, who would ultimately have to convince the DUP the conflict was over and that it was safe to resume power-sharing government at Stormont.
The prime minister also gave the most coherent explanation yet of the British decision to begin a two-year programme of security normalisation on the back of an IRA statement, which Mr Blair said had itself changed the security assessment, rather than actual "acts of completion". Referring to the planned disbandment of home battalions of the Royal Irish Regiment and the dismantling of security installations, Mr Blair said: "These are things that are justified, and actually have been justified for some time, in security terms."
Suggesting confidence that he could satisfactorily consult the DUP leader about decisions concerning the RIR, Mr Blair stressed that normalisation decisions had not been taken politically against the security wishes of the army and police. And he echoed the DUP's emphasis on "actions" rather than "words", saying: "Obviously you have to mark carefully what happens. You had the IRA's statement but you then have got to make sure that what has been said in theory is carried through in practice."
However, their separate talks with Mr Blair left the DUP at odds with the British government over the verification of proposed IRA weapons decommissioning, and with the party's threat of a two-year boycott of talks designed to restore devolved government seemingly intact.
Dr Paisley confirmed he was still seeking a photographic record of IRA decommissioning, a demand supported by the British, Irish and American governments last December. Notwithstanding his previous position, Mr Blair said yesterday that "the only legal requirement" was that decommissioning be conducted by agreement with the International Commission on Decommissioning.
At the same time the rising expectations of a confident Sinn Féin leadership were clear as the party's chief negotiator, Martin McGuinness, also said Dr Paisley "needs to take account of what will be a developing agenda". He said "at some stage the DUP will have to respond to an agenda that is moving on without them".
Whitehall sources were cautious last night, refusing to be drawn on any next steps in the implementation of other outstanding commitments contained in the British-Irish Joint Declaration of April 2003. As Mr Blair had declined to set any sort of timetable for the return of devolution, so officials refused to say when the IRA was expected to begin dumping arms or putting them beyond use.