THE Sinn Fein leader, Mr Gerry Adams, has said he is prepared to "reach out" to the Ulster Unionists to resolve the dispute over paramilitary weapons but he had to be sure of a "meaningful response" from the North's First Minister and UUP leader, Mr David Trimble.
"I want to make sure that Mr Trimble and I jump together on this," he told a news conference yesterday on Capitol Hill, where he was accompanied by Congressmen Peter King, Richard Neal and Joseph Crowley.
He revealed that the UUP leader had told him he wanted an "event" in which a range of republican armaments would be destroyed, but Mr Adams said he told Mr Trimble he could not deliver such an event.
The two leaders had a private discussion for about 30 minutes on Wednesday evening in an office provided by President Clinton at the White House. "The meeting with Mr Trimble was cordial, but I have to say that he showed no evidence whatsoever of changing his position and of making demands on me which I cannot deliver - and he knows that," the Sinn Fein leader said.
Asked to go into detail on the meeting, Mr Adams said: "David Trimble made it very, very clear that he wants from the IRA what he described as an `event', that he wants it to be larger than the LVF event [a reference to the limited decommissioning by the Loyalist Volunteer Force on December 18th], that he wants it to encompass a range of armaments through weaponry into detonators, timing devices, into explosives, and he wants that done in a credible and viable way. I pointed out to him once again that I just couldn't deliver that, that it isn't possible."
Asked if he felt Mr Trimble was "upping the ante" on decommissioning, Mr Adams said: "Well, it is the clearest definition I have got from him, in a series of meetings, of precisely what he requires.
"I know that David Trimble has difficulties. I think that they are psychological difficulties, which I also face. Republicans and nationalists and unionists have that sort of common problem of trying to meet in a forthright way all the challenges of this situation, so I don't want to get into describing this in any way other than in as accurate a way as I can.
"I don't want to say it's an `upping the ante' or anything else. It is the clearest definition I have got from him and I just can't stress enough, as I stand here, that I can't deliver that."
Asked what he could deliver on decommissioning, Mr Adams said: "What Sinn Fein will do, and what we've been trying to do in the time that has just passed by, is, in both the spirit and the letter of the agreement, to meet an accommodation on this issue which satisfies the Unionist Party and I'm still prepared to do that and I have made only one point of condition in any of that and I think it's very common-sense.
"I want Mr Trimble in the loop, before I stretch the republican constituency once again, because we have in the last year taken a number of initiatives. Because there has been no meaningful response it has tended to undermine the credibility of our leadership, so I am prepared to stretch, I am prepared to reach out, but I want to make sure that Mr Trimble and I jump together on this.
"But I stress it has to be within the terms of the agreement and I cannot deliver from the IRA what the British government couldn't achieve in the last 30 years."