St. Andrews, Scotland – Britain and Ireland announced Thursday they would present a plan to Northern Ireland’s rival leaders spelling out how to resurrect a Catholic-Protestant administration as the province’s peace deal intended.
The two governments said, barring a breakthrough, they would publish their blueprint for compromise today at the end of three days of multiparty negotiations at a luxury hotel outside this seaside university town.
The British and Irish prime ministers, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, invited delegations from seven Northern Ireland parties – most crucially Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionists and Gerry Adams’ Sinn Fein – to Scotland in hopes of forging an agreement to revive power-sharing, the central aim of the Good Friday peace pact of 1998.
But after two days of closed meetings, Paisley emphasized Thursday that his British Protestant party would not agree unless Sinn Fein first accepted Northern Ireland’s police force.
Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army-linked party that represents Northern Ireland’s Catholic minority, insisted it would not change its anti-police policy until after power-sharing resumed – this time with Sinn Fein potentially overseeing the police force.
