Hopes of a quick fix solution to Northern Ireland's latest IRA weapons row faded tonight as Sinn Féin and the Ulster Unionists clashed over who was to blame for the political deadlock.
As Ulster Unionists rolled out the first broadcast of their Assembly Election campaign, Sinn Féin's Mr Alex Maskey accused the party of "walking away" from a solution to the arms decommissioning dispute.
|
Unionists countered by urging republicans to focus instead on what they must do to get the peace process moving again.
While insisting Sinn Féin 's dialogue with UUP leader Mr David Trimble was a "hugely important development" which "must be protected," Mr Maskey said the UUP had not fulfilled its part of the peace process deal which collapsed last Tuesday.
The South Belfast Assembly candidate also accused unionists of putting up "new demands". "I believe the UUP have effectively walked away from this phase of the process," he said. "Mr Trimble needs to tell us. He needs to make his position clear. It is now over to David Trimble and the UUP leadership to decide."
With Sinn Féin insisting it had put forward proposals to advance the process in recent days, a UUP spokesman said they had also tabled suggestions. "The Ulster Unionist Party has not walked away," he insisted. "We have made our position clear to republicans as we did before Tuesday's sequence was run.
"If republicans are committed to finding a solution, they need to focus on what is required from them to get things back on track and spend less time indulging in the blame game on the airwaves and the newspaper columns."
Last Tuesday's deal involving the British and Irish governments, republicans and Ulster Unionists stumbled over a lack of clarity around the IRA's latest act of decommissioning.
Although the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning (IICD) claimed the IRA's disarmament move was "larger" than ever before, unionists were alarmed at the lack of detail about what weapons were destroyed and how much of the Provisionals' arsenal remained.