Bertie Ahern, Highlighted difficulties in overcoming obstacles to peace
The Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, has said that he hopes the two governments can finalise a joint position on a way forward in the peace process by this weekend. Speaking in the Dáil, Mr Ahern said that a number of meetings had taken place at official level, as well as contacts at political level; he said that these would continue. Mr Ahern said that the difficulty lay in trying to find a way to win support from the pro-Agreement parties to overcome the remaining obstacles.
The Fine Gael leader, John Bruton, has called on the IRA and other paramilitary organisations to publicly sign up to the Mitchell Principles on which the Good Friday Agreement is based. In a speech in Navan in County Meath last night, John Bruton said that, if this were done, a basis would then exist to restart the Executive and the other institutions without prior decommissioning. Mr Bruton said that, if the IRA agreed to this, it would be tantamount to saying that the war was over. He said that it was unsustainable that Sinn Féin accepted the Mitchell Principles, while the IRA did not. Mr Bruton also called for an end to punishment beatings and he urged the British government to give an undertaking that it would not unilaterally suspend the North's institutions again.
