Governments to abandon shadow phase of accord and `park' arms logjam

A new strategy for implementing the Belfast Agreement has been adopted by the Taoiseach and the British prime minister. It arises from the failure to meet today's deadline for the establishment of the North/South bodies.

Both Mr Ahern and Mr Blair now accept there will be no shadow executive. They also accept there will be no shadow North/South Ministerial Council or implementation bodies. Their view is that the planned transitional phase of the agreement, between today and the formal setting up of the Assembly at the end of February, is abolished. Government sources have confirmed these understandings were reached by Mr Ahern and Mr Blair when they reviewed the decommissioning logjam at a meeting during the EU mini-summit in Austria last weekend.

The first inkling of the revised position of the two governments was given by Mr Ahern on Thursday when he stated, in Edinburgh, that the decommissioning issue was "parked for some months". He saw the decision on the establishment of the full executive in February as "the crunch time".

The decommissioning logjam is being "parked" with the International Commission on Decommissioning, according to sources, because Sinn Fein informed the Government earlier this week that it could exercise no further influence over the IRA on the matter at this time.

With the slippage in deadlines, the new strategy is to bring all of the institutions proposed in the agreement to the point of establishment together.

The two governments had hoped the areas to be devolved to the first six North/South implementation bodies could be agreed by today's deadline - though the bodies could not be set up "without their political heads". The governments also intend to speed up movement on other areas of the agreement - policing, equality, human rights and prisoners - in order to demonstrate progress on the ground.

The new strategy is thus to reach the objective of a Northern executive by a different route - to lay the political groundwork to make it possible for Sinn Fein to influence the IRA to make a decommissioning gesture in four months' time.