Parties renew calls for round table Northern talks

Pressure mounted on the Irish and British governments today to convene round table talks in the North after the SDLP and the Ulster Unionists united to call for urgent discussions to break the political logjam. The two parties had an hour of discussions at Stormont while in Dublin this afternoon an Alliance delegation was meeting Foreign Affairs Minister Brian Cowen.

The Ulster Unionists and the SDLP had an hour of talks this morning described afterwards by Sean Farren as very positive. He said that they were united in their backing for urgent roundtable talks. The SDLP negotiator said his party was concerned by signals from the governments that suggested they were reluctant to take such a step. Asked about the Taoiseach's warning that the multi-party format would merely provide a forum for expressing recriminations, Mr Farren said that recriminations were being exchanged anyhow and round table discussions would show people that the process can move on.

Ulster Unionist Michael McGimpsey said that both parties wanted to get out of the current suspension. Unionists were not interested in humiliations or defeats but did want answers to Seamus Mallon's challenge to the IRA to say if and when decommissioning would occur. Like the SDLP, he backed calls for a round table session but said that he detected uncertainty from the two governments about how they should proceed.

The Fine Gael leader, John Bruton, has raised concerns over an apparent change in the Government's strategy in relation to Northern Ireland. Over the weekend the Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Government Ministers suggested that demands for IRA decommissioning might be replaced by calls for a commitment from the organisation to disband as part of a lasting settlement.

However, John Bruton said that it would be impossible to verify that a secret organisation like the IRA had ceased to exist. On Morning Ireland, Mr Bruton expressed concern that the change in policy could harm the peace process.

The Parades Commission has banned part of a planned North Belfast Loyalist parade from a contentious route which would have seen it pass a catholic church during mass next Saturday night. For the first year ever, three Loyalist bands had applied to march from Graymount to White City. Over the past fortnight Nationalist politicians and community leaders had repeatedly called for the parade to be banned.