Situation in North will be `intolerable' without progress

The North will be in an "intolerable position" if substantive progress is not made within the next 10 days on the peace process, the Taoiseach has warned.

In a stark assessment of the situation, Mr Ahern said "if there is no move, things will go down on Saturday week," the day when the resignation of the North's First Minister, Mr David Trimble, is due to take effect.

There was only one "sensible option" and that was to sit down for 10 days and try to resolve the situation.

Otherwise, the First Minister would resign and the Deputy First Minister would probably resign. There would be a six-week stalemate "during the worst time of the year in the North" after which the Northern Secretary would have to decide on an autumn election. People would have to "take up positions and there would be more polarisation and intransigence".

It was hard, he said "to imagine the difficulty of trying to bring it back together again. Quite frankly, I do not think it is possible. The alternative is to sit down for 10 days and spend as many hours as necessary to try and resolve it. That is the dilemma and in my view there is only one sensible way to do it."

During Taoiseach's Question Time, Mr Ahern told the Opposition there had been a clear "rolling back" of the work that had been done.

The parties were more polarised since the election, the ground "has tightened" and his assumption of a few weeks ago that they would pick up where they left off after the election, was now "wishful thinking".

There was no "magic trick the governments can do, or if there is I am not privy to it. It is not in the Irish Government's hands." He agreed with the Labour party leader, Mr Ruairi Quinn, that if there was no progress on decommissioning there would be little chance of progress on other issues.

He said Sinn Fein gained in the election and while everyone had a role to play "Sinn Fein have the only role when it comes to decommissioning. If they were to help on decommissioning I could certainly mediate with the British government in order to press for demilitarisation. It would greatly strengthen my hand also on the policing issue."

He warned that if nobody moved "then quite frankly, there is no point in negotiations because there will be nothing to negotiate".

They had already talked the issue to death and unless there was some movement "the danger is that the whole process will be talked to death".

"Progress on decommissioning would have to be very clear. A process with a vague timetable would not get us anywhere. I am confident that if we could get movement on policing, we could move on to deal with the demilitarisation issue which would help the decommissioning issue."

He pointed out that if decommissioning of arms was to equal surrender, "we would never see it".

Everybody would be helpful in trying to construct a way which could not be interpreted as having anything to do with surrender, "which will never happen and which would not resolve the situation anyhow".

Sinn Fein believed it had done quite an amount on the arms issue by way of inspections. "There is no doubt about that having been helpful, but it is not enough."

He said Mr Trimble had "been brave" on the issue of decommissioning in recent years, but his hands were tied "in the absence of some stated progress on decommissioning".