THE Taoiseach has asked the British Prime Minister to agree on issues to be pursued by the two governments in advance of their planned meeting later this month.

Mr Bruton said he had already agreed with Mr Major on two key objectives to bring a secure restoration of the IRA ceasefire and to continue to work towards the start of all party talks.

To these ends, he had suggested pursuing five more issues

. The creation of a way for Sinn Fein to honourably rejoin the political process once the IRA campaign was over

. Further development of the Government's proximity talks proposal, particularly in view of the principles and recommendations of the Mitchell report

. Whether and how an election, which would meet the Mitchell conditions and might follow from proximity talks, might lead directly and speedily to all party negotiations

. Mr John Hume's proposal ford referendums north and south as a means of giving all parties on the island a mandate to pursue political agreement by democratic means

. How the active role of the US administration might be deepened to augment the shared efforts towards peace and agreement.

In all this, agreement and not imposition must apply, the Taoiseach said. Those involved must be guided by the principles of parity of esteem and equality of treatment for both the nationalist and unionist communities.

"I believe the Irish Government should pursue the policy it believes is right. It should not pursue a policy designed to either appease, or to provoke, the IRA. The IRA will unfortunately work to its own agenda.

"The Irish Government must pursue the agenda that it, as a democratically elected government, believes is right for the Irish people. It must take its stand on that basis.

Mr Bruton, who was concluding the three day debate on the peace process, said there were questions that had to be asked. If there was a ceasefire tomorrow and all party talks started next week, would the IRA resume violence whenever the talks reached a difficult point from a republican point of view? Was there anything Sinn Fein could say to convince people that such an assumption would be wrong?

If the position of the republican movement was that there would be no split, and that not a single bullet would be handed over until a final settlement was reached, did it mean that a small minority could, as a matter of principle, always dictate policy to the entire, movement? Was Sinn Fein to unambiguously support the six, Mitchell principles, and would it do the same in relation to Mitchell's guidelines on the modalities' of decommissioning?

It was human to hope for the best, the Taoiseach said. "But pessimists can point to the cancellation of the Sinn Fein Ardfheis.

Was it postponed back in January in case a planned military operation caused difficulty for the party? Pessimists argued Sinn Fein, knowing from its talks with the Mitchell body it might not be able to accept the principle of consent, needed to buy time.

Speaking for himself, the Taoiseach said it would be foolish for him to sign up for a totally optimistic or a totally pessimistic scenario.

"So the sensible thing to do is to make a synthesis of the scenarios. Pick out those things we can be fairly sure of, and proceed from" there. That is what we have done. We will go on talking to Sinn, Fein, but we will go on being suspicious of the IRA."

Mr Bruton said the Government was bound to lean in favour of the nationalist community and it had an obligation to do so under the Anglo Irish Agreement. In practical terms, it had an obligation to do so because the nationalists were in the minority.

But that did not mean the Government must see itself exclusively as seeking to understand Just one community, Mr Bruton said. It could not contribute to compromise if that was its role.