The Sinn Fein MP for Mid-Ulster, Mr Martin McGuinness, has said his party would be interested to hear further elaboration from the British government to confirm whether it had softened its stance on the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons. Mr McGuinness was responding to a speech by the Northern Secretary, Mr Peter Mandelson, in Dublin on Tuesday evening in which there was no reference to decommissioning.
Following a meeting with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, in Dublin yesterday afternoon, Mr McGuinness said Sinn Fein "was interested to see whether or not Peter Mandelson is going to be more realistic about how the situation is going to be handled."
However, he added that "you don't resolve this issue by making a speech in Dublin and not mentioning the word `decommissioning'."
He had earlier stated that if there was a move to overcome the decommissioning problem, Sinn Fein had not "heard it and the least they [the British government] could do was tell us about it." He said the British government did not have "a foggy notion about how to handle the present difficulties that they have placed us all in through the decision to suspend the institutions".
Sinn Fein described the 90-minute meeting with Mr Cowen as "positive and constructive". Mr McGuinness said the Government was "seized with a sense of urgency" to get the institutions re-established.
He also said the Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble, was continuing to make hardline demands including surrender by the IRA and decommissioning to be dealt with according to a unionist prescription rather than according to the Belfast Agreement.