Mr Tony Blair described the British and Irish joint paper as a "historic opportunity" to bring peace to the people of Northern Ireland. The "Rubicon has now been crossed" to potential security and stability on the island of Ireland, said Mr Bertie Ahern.
The British Prime Minister and Taoiseach presented their document, The Way Forward, to the press outside Castle Buildings, Stormont, around 8 p.m. yesterday after five days of negotiations.
They urged serious consideration of the paper and insisted it offered the best chance to see the full implementation of the Belfast Agreement.
"I say to you in all frankness that this is the only way forward for Northern Ireland. It is the most historic opportunity for peace this land has known for years and years and years. I ask you all to give it a chance to work," said Mr Blair.
He promised that "within days" of proposed devolution on July 18th the process of IRA decommissioning would begin. The date for the start of actual paramilitary disarmament is a matter for Gen John de Chastelain's decommissioning body, but Mr Blair was confident that disarmament would occur.
Decommissioning was the huge prize to be grasped. "What a fantastic day for Northern Ireland if we could achieve it; what people have been looking for years and years and years in Northern Ireland is the decommissioning of weapons.
"If any part of this process is broken there is an absolute legislative fail-safe, immediately and automatically, which suspends the process," said Mr Blair in an attempt to reassure unionists that they should sign up to the deal.
He hoped the initiative would win the support of everyone who supported the Belfast Agreement. Once the proposals were accepted and put in place they offered "at last, after decades of violence and conflict and injustice, the chance for peace and democracy and equality for all", he added.
Mr Blair said there was not yet trust in Northern Ireland so there had to be the certainty which would be provided by the failsafes.
These proposals provided an opportunity to "put behind us the misery, the wretched ordeal of bitterness, terror and revenge".
The joint paper challenged republicans "to embrace democracy and renounce violence" and unionists to "share power with all democrats".
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said the past five days of negotiations were the most difficult in which he had ever been involved. He hoped the joint initiative was "a good day for democracy in Northern Ireland".
He looked forward to the early establishment of inclusive bodies arising from the Belfast Agreement including the North-South bodies and the British-Irish Council. The North now had a chance to move forward on the basis of partnership.
"The Rubicon has now been crossed, the people of Northern Ireland and the island as a whole can now face the future with a sense of security after the terrible conflict of the past 30 years," said Mr Ahern.
The SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, said for too long Northern politics had operated from a position of distrust. The time had come for politics here to be founded on trust and for the proposals in the Belfast Agreement to be implemented, he added.
Mr Seamus Mallon, the North's Deputy First Minister, argued that the British-Irish paper, despite Mr Trimble's initial reservations, should be more acceptable to unionists than was the Hills borough Declaration which the UUP accepted.
"This is a piddling little thing compared to what was on offer at Hillsborough," he said.
