The rejection of the Hillsborough Declaration by Sinn Fein and the Progressive Unionist Party was a very negative development, according to the Ulster Unionist senior negotiator, Sir Reg Empey.
He said yesterday's rejection of the document by these two parties called into question their level of commitment to the peace process. They wanted to "sail through this process and take all the benefits including prisoner releases." The UUP leader, Mr David Trimble, and Mr Empey met the Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, and the senior Sinn Fein negotiator, Mr Martin McGuinness, yesterday morning at Parliament Buildings, Stormont. The 50-minute meeting failed to bridge the gap between the parties on the arms issue.
Speaking afterwards, Mr Adams said: "The Unionist position hasn't changed, and it appears to me that there is a question mark over whether the British government is up to the task of forging ahead with this agreement.
"The British government cannot unload its responsibilities on to the parties here. The way forward lies in the British government triggering d'Hondt and establishing the executive and the other institutions as agreed on Good Friday a year ago and promised may times since then."
Senior Sinn Fein figures yesterday urged that the Belfast Agreement remain the basis for talks rather than the declaration. The Sinn Fein chairman, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, said his party would only negotiate within the terms of the agreement and added that they would not be swayed by threats of resignation from the UUP leader and the North's First Minister, Mr David Trimble.
But Sir Reg yesterday rejected Sinn Fein's suggestion that the Hillsborough Declaration was an attempt to rewrite the Belfast Agreement. "It is an attempt to give expression to some of the points in the Good Friday agreement and outline how the agreement can be implemented. It is not a rewriting of the agreement."
Mr Nigel Dodds of the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) said yesterday the recent find of battery packs of SAM-7 missiles in Pomeroy, Co Tyrone, demonstrated that IRA was "continuing to prepare to go back to war". He challenged the SDLP to choose whether it intended to stay with Sinn Fein or "move on". Democratic parties must leave these people behind, he added.
Further demilitarisation was intended to run down the security forces, "and yet the IRA/Sinn Fein refuse to budge one inch on giving up one ounce of Semtex or one bullet or rifle or one missile," said Mr Dodds.
According to the Rev William McCrea, of the DUP, the arms find in Pomeroy was a coded message from the IRA to the British government that if it did not succumb to their threats, they had the power to make them a reality.