British prime minister Tony Blair is considering a plan to restore the Northern Ireland Assembly with initially limited powers and an absolute deadline for the re-establishment of an inclusive power-sharing Executive, writes Frank Millar, London Editor.
This emerged last night amid the confusion and uncertainty generated by Mr Blair's decision to cancel a planned trip to Belfast next week to deliver a major speech intended to force the pace in negotiations with the political parties about the return of devolution.
Sources close to DUP leader the Rev Ian Paisley have suggested Mr Blair "has no plan" and is unlikely to reinstate his proposed visit to the North.
However, as reported in The Irish Times on Thursday, Downing Street maintains Mr Blair's trip has been postponed rather than cancelled, and that the prime minister now has "a clear idea of how to proceed". Usually reliable sources suggest this was likely to be by way of a time-limited initiative allowing the Assembly to get up-and-running "in some sort of shadow form" but with an end-date set for an Assembly vote on the formation of a new power-sharing administration.
While allowing that the emergent plan is nowhere near completion, and that difficult negotiations lie ahead, the sources suggested the timetable for such an initiative could be between six months and a year.
This would seem to offer a variation of proposals put to Mr Blair by the SDLP and Ulster Unionists at their meetings at Westminster on Wednesday. Crucially, however, a fixed one-year time-frame would arguably allow the DUP a credible period in which to assess the continuing state of IRA activity through recurring reports of the Independent Monitoring Commission.
At the same time, assuming an eventual clean bill of health for the republican movement, it could put the onus on the DUP to take responsibility for collapsing the political institutions should Dr Paisley still refuse to enter government with Sinn Féin.
It is also suggested that Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain might use new powers to call a snap Assembly election later this year, in order to avoid having any successful moves toward resumed power-sharing derailed by the hardened rhetoric which would inevitably attend the elections scheduled for May 2007.
Recent republican rhetoric has persuaded some Ulster Unionists that Sinn Féin might "pull the plug" on any proposal to restore the Assembly without a functioning Executive as prescribed by the Belfast Agreement.
However the calculation appears to be that neither Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams nor Dr Paisley would want to take the blame for wrecking an initiative offering at least the prospect of breaking the political impasse.
The suggestion of a time-limit would also appear to satisfy SDLP leader Mark Durkan's objection that current DUP proposals for a limited role for the Assembly could be used to "encamp the parties" on such terrain indefinitely.
However, Mr Blair faces major difficulty persuading the SDLP to co-operate with any initiative in the context of London's clear determination to legislate for the alternative "comprehensive agreement" which the British and Irish governments failed to conclude with the DUP and Sinn Féin in December 2004. After his latest meetings with both governments, Mr Durkan insisted "the so-called 'comprehensive agreement' was not a basis for progress".
Following Thursday's publication of a new Northern Ireland Bill designed to quickly enable any new agreement, Mr Durkan warned: "There is real danger of political misadventure if the governments try to implement the failed comprehensive agreement."