The Government has excluded "no avenue or line or approach" to resolving the decommissioning impasse that would be consistent with the Belfast Agreement, the Taoiseach said yesterday.
The issue of arms was "a thread that runs through Irish history, full of ominous destabilising potential" he told the annual Fianna Fail Arbour Hill commemoration. It was "in many ways the most difficult and emotive issue of all in the peace process".
He said the Government had no desire to rewrite the Belfast Agreement in relation to weapons decommissioning. However "we need a consensus on how to implement the more difficult and contested parts of the agreement, given that the order in which all the different elements of progress would happen was not completely settled a year ago". "The independent commission under Gen de Chastelain established by the agreement may provide the route forward, but we exclude no avenue or line of approach that would be consistent with the agreement."
He said that despite some demilitarisation moves in the North, some continuing British army deployments and activity, particularly in south Armagh, "give out other conflicting signals".
However, he welcomed the decision of the British army and RUC to vacate the GAA grounds in Crossmaglen, thus ending a "running sore" that had gone on for a long time.
The ceasefires had created confidence, as had the IRA's willingness to return the bodies of the disappeared to their families and moves towards ending punishment beatings.
There had also been negative developments, however, the worst being the Omagh bombing. The continuing sectarian harassment of the people of Garvaghy Road in Portadown must be stopped through dialogue, he said.
"If the leaders of unionism can talk to the leaders of Sinn Fein, if David Trimble can meet the Pope, then the Orange Order can speak to the communities through which by tradition they desire to march."
Deep reform of policing structures in Northern Ireland was needed, he said. "I recognise that during the last 30 years we owe much to brave police officers in both jurisdictions who have operated at all times within the rule of law, some of whom have paid with their lives", he said.
Nevertheless, the complaints of threats to solicitor Rosemary Nelson before her murder and the same complaints in relation to the murder of solicitor Pat Finucane a decade earlier were "extremely serious" and had to be addressed.
Mr Ahern also announced that he is to ask the Royal Irish Academy to organise a seminar on the subject of whether the so-called `black diaries' allegedly written by patriot Roger Casement are genuine.