The North's First Minister designate reacted furiously last night to Dr Mo Mowlam's announcement extending the deadline for the creation of the Northern Ireland executive until Easter week. And Mr David Trimble said his meeting later today with Sinn Fein leaders at Stormont would be obviously "less immediate and less focused" as a result.
Arriving in London for a short Commons debate on cross-Border implementation bodies, the UUP leader said he had not been consulted about Dr Mowlam's statement until after the event.
He said the Northern Secretary had been aware he had taken "a significant step" in seeking today's meeting, alongside his deputy, Mr John Taylor, with the Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, and Mr Martin McGuinness. But "the meeting will have lost a lot of its significance because of her comments" and her decision to postpone decisions on decommissioning and setting up the executive.
Unionist sources said Mr Trimble had complained to 10 Downing Street about Dr Mowlam's decision, and the manner of it, and suggested Number 10 had been "surprised" by the "definitive" nature of her comments.
The Sinn Fein leadership has warned that a breakthrough may not come with the new target date. As tomorrow's deadline for devolution slipped, Dr Mowlam promised to activate the d'Hondt system for the automatic allocation of government ministries no later than the week beginning March 29th, the week of Good Friday. Acknowledging the delay would disappoint some, Dr Mowlam said both communities would not have been represented in an executive had she held to tomorrow's deadline.
"Some parties feared it might even collapse the process." Nobody wanted to allow slippage beyond Easter, as the marching season and European elections loomed.
As the UUP and Sinn Fein angrily blamed each other for the slippage, Mr Trimble and Mr Adams prepared to meet in Belfast today. The impasse was also discussed by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, in a 15-minute telephone conversation yesterday.
Mr Ahern also had a 90-minute meeting with Mr Adams, after which the Sinn Fein president expressed disappointment at the deferred deadline. The British government decision was "a mistake" and sprang from Mr Trimble's threat "to walk". There would, he predicted, be no "miraculous breakthrough" in Washington on St Patrick's Day. The only one who could sort out the problem was "the man in Downing Street" who must get Mr Trimble to "wise up", he added. There were two unionist "game plans" - one to dilute, delay and frustrate the peace process and the other to see Sinn Fein debarred from the executive, a collapse in the process, a return by the IRA to war alongside a "mistaken" unionist belief that they could work with "more compliant nationalists".
The Dail will shelve scheduled legislation today to facilitate the introduction of a Bill providing for the establishment of the six North-South implementation bodies envisaged under the Belfast Agreement.
The legislation follows yesterday's signing by Dr Mowlam, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, of four treaties in Dublin Castle to pave the way for the implementation bodies, a North-South ministerial council, a British-Irish council and a British-Irish Intergovernmental Conference.