Joint preparations for government in Northern Ireland have been "going extremely well", Sinn Féin's chief negotiator Martin McGuinness said yesterday.
Speaking to journalists as the party's five Dublin candidates handed in their nomination papers, Mr McGuinness said he and DUP leader Ian Paisley had been working well together over the past weeks.
"Paisley and I have met four or five or six times, sometimes for up to two hours at his office and at my office, and we have been taking joint decisions on all sorts of matters. Things have been going extremely well," he said in advance of the first meeting of the Northern executive at Stormont on Tuesday.
He said he was excited by the prospect of joint government. "The fact is we have been working very, very hard at this peace process over the course of many years and all of us who have been working on it since the Good Friday agreement have never given up on it."
He described the legacy of British prime minister Tony Blair in the North as "mighty".
Sen Edward Kennedy will be in Belfast next week as part of a delegation sent by President George Bush to attend the restoration of devolved government in the North.
Mr Bush's special envoy to the North, Paula Dobrianski, will lead the delegation, which will also include US ambassador to Ireland Thomas Foley, US consul general in Belfast Howard Dean Pittman and Richard Powers, former president of the Morgan Stanley Investment Management Client Group.
