The talks process, which resumes on Monday, must move immediately from the general to the specific, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, said yesterday. The recent killings and violence pointed to the urgent necessity for real political progress, he added.
Mr Andrews, following an Irish Times report that the British and Irish governments are hoping to establish potential heads of agreement before Monday's resumed talks, said the "time for movement is now".
Mr Andrews insisted the talks must be accelerated. "Let me spell it out again. The time for moving from the general to the specific begins next Monday. We are very definitely entering the final lap. We simply cannot afford to wait any longer before serious engagement begins. The time for preliminaries is past," he said.
Speaking in west Belfast he said it was hard to visualise a better opportunity for agreement.
The slow pace of the talks made him uncomfortable. But despite the difficulties it also had to be acknowledged that last autumn "saw the beginnings of real debate on matters of substance", and moreover most of the parties had a "realistic enough idea of what the broad outlines of a settlement might be".
"But these small and tentative steps are not good enough any more," he continued. "If we fail now we will simply be handing the stage over to those who do not share our belief in the primacy of politics. This is precisely what the recent killings have been seeking to achieve.
"Can we let these obscenities replace dialogue among democratically-elected representatives? This would be absolutely unthinkable. The time for movement is now."
Mr Andrews said that despite the recent violence people must not surrender to despair, or abandon a determination to establish a genuine and lasting peace, "rooted in political agreement".
It was only through people and politicians working together to craft a detailed and carefully-balanced settlement that the talks participants would be able to show up the "barrenness" of the critics of the process and to "disprove their nightmare scenarios".
"I firmly believe that the single greatest obstacle we face is fear - above all, fear that a reasonable settlement could be represented, by extreme voices on one's own side, as a sell-out. Both governments have repeatedly tried to allay this fear, to point to the well-defined principles which we know must form the basis of agreement," he said. Politicians' first priority was to ensure that Northern Ireland was not plunged back into serious violence. "We must not and, under the Mitchell Principles, cannot support or condone the use of violence for any political purpose. When we disagree, as inevitably we will if our discussions are to be honest, we should do so in a mutually respectful and reasoned way. This alone would help to calm fears and encourage serious dialogue. "But it is not enough merely to disagree peacefully or politely. We must do our utmost to agree, and quickly. This is both a political and a moral obligation," he added.
