The DUP leader, the Rev Ian Paisley, has indicated he is prepared to make compromises in order to strike a deal that would result in the restoration of a power-sharing Northern Executive and Assembly. Gerry Moriarty and Dan Keenan report.
Ahead of a crucial Blair-Paisley meeting in London on Monday, the British and Irish governments are likely to draw hope from Dr Paisley's comments after he met the PSNI Chief Constable, Mr Hugh Orde, yesterday evening.
A senior London source said yesterday that in Downing Street on Monday Mr Blair would again seek to persuade the DUP leader that the governments' amended blueprint for restoring devolution was a "reasonable compromise".
Speaking last night at Fianna Fáil's annual Cairde Fáil dinner in Dublin, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, departed from a prepared script to warn that just four days remained to agree a Northern deal. "Next week is make or break," he told 1,700 Fianna Fáil supporters gathered in the Citywest Hotel.
Dr Paisley's suggestion that he is willing to "swallow" some unpalatable elements of the blueprint would appear to indicate that he is indeed prepared to make compromises to achieve a deal.
It is understood that Dr Paisley was in contact with Mr Blair by phone yesterday. After meeting Mr Orde at police headquarters, the DUP leader said of the prospects of governing alongside Sinn Féin: "I will have to do a good deal of swallowing. I will have to do a good deal of biting my lip in future days. But I am prepared to do that provided they cease to be terrorists, and cease to do what they have been doing so long and washing their hands in the blood of my fellows."
He confirmed that he had received further clarification from the two governments on a draft agreement, but denied it was up to the DUP to say "yes" to the British-Irish proposals.
"It is not me that has to say yes or no. It's the IRA/Sinn Féin. I've to do nothing. I don't have guns. I've got two arms and a mouth that I can use. But that's all," Dr Paisley said.
Responsibility for progress, he added, lay with republicans. "Mr Adams can't wash his hands Pilate-like now." He believed Mr Adams and Mr Martin McGuinness were "bloody and deceitful men". However, he also believed that if they "give up their arms and give up their criminal acts, then I have to recognise that they have been elected to parliament and I have to accept that". It remained unclear last night, however, whether there was potential for compromise on the crucial issue of photographic verification of IRA decommissioning, which the DUP is demanding.
The blueprint proposes that Dr Paisley should be shown pictures of the disarmament, but that the photographs would not be published until after devolution was restored. Dr Paisley wants the photographs published before devolution is reinstated.
Sinn Féin has made no commitments on the issue, although in some quarters comments this week by its president, Mr Gerry Adams, that republicans would not be "humiliated", was interpreted as a rejection of the proposal on photographs.
A DUP Assembly member, Mr Sammy Wilson, said yesterday that photographic proof was essential for unionists. "This isn't about humiliation, it's about reassuring unionists that decommissioning really has happened this time, and it's not about a dozen or so guns being destroyed," he said.