British prime minister Tony Blair is to meet DUP leader Ian Paisley in London this afternoon as the British and Irish governments step up their drive to restore power-sharing government to Northern Ireland.
Mr Blair is also meeting Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in Dublin on Thursday as senior Downing Street and Northern Ireland Office officials prepare a major speech on the peace process that the prime minister is scheduled to make in Belfast next month.
Mr Ahern and Mr Blair expect that the report from the Independent Monitoring Commission due to be published next week will indicate that the IRA, with a number of qualifications and reservations, generally is living up to its pledge to end paramilitary and criminal activity.
They hope that the commission's findings will exert pressure on Dr Paisley to participate in negotiations with Sinn Féin, notwithstanding the DUP leader's insistence that the time is not right for such engagement.
Today's talks between Dr Paisley and Mr Blair at Downing Street are expected to explore the possibilities of such talks.
The commission's report, which should be with the governments by very early next week at the latest for possible publication on Wednesday or Thursday, will be mainly positive about the IRA honouring its commitments but it will not provide a "total clean bill of health", senior sources told The Irish Times.
"It won't be a 100 per cent clear report for the IRA. There will be questions about whether certain types of criminality were carried out by the IRA or by IRA members acting independently of the organisation. There will also be some references to those exiled by the IRA. But the report will be fair and mainly positive," said one well-placed source.
Mr Ahern and Mr Blair will further develop their strategy to persuade the DUP to engage with Sinn Féin when they meet in Dublin on Thursday. The same day Mr Blair will pay a courtesy visit to President Mary McAleese at Áras an Uachtaráin.
The governments believe that the main focus should be on persuading Sinn Féin to sign up to policing and the DUP to agree to share power in the Northern Executive and Assembly.
These issues are likely to be high on the agenda of the annual conferences of the DUP and Sinn Féin, which take place respectively the weekend after next and in mid-February. The DUP is expected to maintain a hardline stance against dealing with Sinn Féin, while Sinn Féin, as Martin McGuinness said yesterday, is expected to insist that without DUP agreement to power-sharing his party will not endorse the PSNI.
Mr Blair will make a major speech in Northern Ireland in February along the lines of his "acts of completion" speech in Belfast in October 2002, a senior London official said yesterday.
Mr Blair is due to make it equally clear in his February speech that unless Sinn Féin and the DUP take risks respectively on policing and power-sharing, politics must remain deadlocked.
