Mr David Trimble appears to have opened the door to a possible compromise on decommissioning following his meeting with the Taoiseach in Government Buildings late last night. He signalled that he supports Mr Ahern's public call on Sinn Fein to set out a timetable for the decommissioning of arms.
Dealing with the impasse on decommissioning and the setting up of the shadow executive, the North's First Minister said there was a very obvious difficulty at the moment. "In my view, the difficulty arises through the failure of the republican movement to honour its side of the bargain. I think actually that they do recognise that there is an obligation on them to fulfil the agreement. But the question is that at the moment they are reluctant to say when they are going to begin," Mr Trimble said.
Asked if it would be enough for the republican movement to say when it was going to decommission, he was more circumspect: "I think we want to know when they are going to do it and we want to see it begin in a credible way. It is not helpful to be crawling over hypothetical situations like this." The Taoiseach said decommissioning was one of the difficulties they had discussed at their hour-long meeting. "It is a difficulty in terms of moving on the shadow executive, but we have to keep on working our way around it to find a solution."
For the first time, he had called publicly on Sinn Fein to produce a time schedule for decommissioning, just hours before his meeting with Mr Trimble.
Speaking to journalists before their meeting, Mr Ahern said he had stated several times that from Sinn Fein's perspective a movement on decommissioning before the establishment of the shadow executive and the two new ministerial councils was not in the Belfast Agreement.
"Equally, it is a fair question to say when will it all start. We know when it has to finish. I think that is a fair question," Mr Ahern said.
Asked if he was looking for a schedule on decommissioning now rather than the handing in of arms before the setting-up of the shadow executive, he responded: "I think if we knew what everyone's bottom line was and if we knew what people were prepared to do and when they were prepared to do it, it would certainly help. If I know what they can't do, we need to know what they can do."
Earlier yesterday, Mr Trimble and the Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, met in Belfast to discuss difficulties in the peace process.
Sinn Fein described the half-hour discussion as a "useful and serious" part of the "normalisation" process. But the party expressed concern at recent comments by Mr Trimble indicating that, in the absence of IRA decommissioning, the other parties in the Assembly could form an executive without Sinn Fein. These remarks it described as "a very serious development" and part of what it called "the old agenda".
Stressing that he would be attempting to move on all aspects of the agreement at last night's meeting, Mr Ahern said there were two opposites on decommissioning, "and the more it has been highlighted the more it has been separated, the more people are digging themselves in. I think we have to try, within the totality of the agreement, to see how we can move that out".
Having spoken to the British Prime Minister earlier this week, Mr Ahern stated: "We see that our job is to try to create the room and the exits for people to remove any obstacles and keep things moving overall." He said he would be would be talking to Mr Adams by telephone and to the Northern Secretary, Dr Mowlam, this morning.
