Taoiseach Bertie Ahern will meet the British prime minister Tony Blair in Moscow today, on the margins of the victory for Europe commemorations, for informal discussions on Northern Ireland in the wake of last Thursday's Westminster elections. Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor and Liam Reid report
Both leaders will assess the prospects of injecting fresh momentum into the stalled political process following the election which almost wiped out the Ulster Unionist Party in the House of Commons, and re-established the DUP and Sinn Féin as the dominant parties.
Speaking in Dublin yesterday Mr Ahern said Mr Blair had assured him in a telephone conversation that he was committed to seeing powersharing restored in Northern Ireland. The Taoiseach was also optimistic about prospects for a political solution.
"If we can make the progress that we have requested of the parties to deal with the issues of decommissioning, to deal with the issues of criminality and move to a new future and the IRA stepping aside, then we can make a lot of progress," he said.
His comments came as the UUP search for a new leader began following party leader David Trimble's resignation on Saturday after he lost his Upper Bann seat to the DUP. The party initially said such a decision would be put off until after the local election results. These are being counted today and tomorrow with over 1,000 candidates competing for almost 600 seats.
The SDLP share of the vote dropped by over 3 per cent but it still has three seats at Westminster. The UUP, however, which had five seats, now has a lone MP in the House of Commons, Lady (Sylvia) Hermon, who told RTÉ yesterday she may run for the leadership.
Other potential contenders include pro-Belfast Agreement Assembly member and unsuccessful Westminster candidate Reg Empey and the anti-agreement David Burnside, who lost his South Antrim Westminster seat to Rev William McCrea of the DUP.
Ulster Unionists are hoping that the party will perform better in the local elections so they can credibly argue that the UUP is still a significant political party. Unlike the Westminster poll the local elections are counted on the proportional representation system which provides a broader picture of electoral support and could assist the UUP and SDLP.
The key to political progress rests primarily now with the IRA. Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams repeated at the weekend that his call on the IRA to fully embrace peace and democracy was designed to get the political "process back on track", but he gave no indication when the IRA might respond.
Speaking on TV3's The Political Party last night Sinn Féin vice-president Pat Doherty said the IRA was debating a timeframe for change.
"I don't know how long it will take for the IRA to respond," he said. "I would like to think that it would come to some conclusion in a relatively short time but I don't know the timescale."
DUP leader Ian Paisley has made it clear that until the IRA has clearly demonstrated it has decommissioned and effectively disbanded, he will not share power with Sinn Féin. He will have been reinforced in his view by a new Independent Monitoring Commission report which has been presented to both governments, but has yet to be published, which states that the IRA is still recruiting, targeting and carrying out surveillance.