The DUP and Ulster Unionist Party have indicated they would co-operate with the reactivation of the Northern Assembly in interim form in May as currently proposed by the British and Irish governments.
Sinn Féin and the SDLP continued to voice their opposition to any form of "shadow" Assembly that would be outside the terms of the Belfast Agreement, although they did not rule out entering the Assembly in May and testing whether it would lead to the reinstatement of a fully functioning executive in the autumn.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in Brussels yesterday indicated his and the British prime minister Tony Blair's determination to press ahead with their plan to reconvene the Assembly in May. They are still aiming to come to Northern Ireland in the first week in April to announce their proposals to establish a time-limited Assembly that would either be fully re-established in the autumn or else dissolved.
The proposals, which are still to be fine-tuned, involve recalling the Assembly in May, senior sources told The Irish Times last night. Six weeks later, under Belfast Agreement legislation, there would then be an attempt to elect a first and deputy first minister and ministerial executive by triggering the D'Hondt system of electing ministers based on the respective strengths of the parties.
This would almost certainly fail. Thereafter special legislation would be enacted in Westminster to allow the Assembly remain in existence but to go into recess for the summer vacation.
The plan is that in September the Assembly would reconvene and there would be another period, of six weeks or possibly longer, leading up to another attempt to re-establish the executive. They contend this complies with the Belfast Agreement.
Mr Ahern and Mr Blair hope that two reports from the Independent Monitoring Commission in April and October will have further established that the IRA has fully disavowed paramilitarism and criminality, possibly creating the conditions where the DUP would share power with Sinn Féin. If this were not possible, the proposal then is to collapse the Assembly, stop paying Assembly salaries, and revert to Plan B, whereby there would be a strengthening of North-South and British-Irish governmental co-operation.
Ahead of their visit to the North early next month, Mr Ahern and Mr Blair are to remain in contact with the parties to try to persuade them that the British-Irish plan can work.
DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson suggested his party would enter a phased "trust-building" Assembly. If it were clear at the end of that phase that the Provisional movement had fully embraced democracy, then the DUP would join an Executive, he indicated. "If they have not, we will not go into government, no matter what the timetable might dictate," he said.
