The relentless fault-finding over who is responsible for stalling the implementation of the Belfast Agreement continued yesterday with leading Sinn Fein and Ulster Unionist Party politicians blaming each other for the deadlock.
The Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, said the UUP was preventing the implementation of the agreement over its demand for prior IRA decommissioning which was outside the terms of the agreement and was "not possible at this time".
Mr Adams was also critical of the British and Irish governments. He said Sinn Fein had been constructive and positive and would attempt to be creative, but he had no confidence that the governments would act to form an executive. The governments were "entrapped and impaled on the unionist position", he added.
"Contrary to the protestations from the two governments that they will not park the Good Friday agreement, the Good Friday agreement as a vehicle is now stationary," said Mr Adams.
In particular he accused the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, of failing to put pressure on the UUP and its leader, Mr David Trimble, to allow the executive to be established. "He knows the crisis we are all in. The solution lies in his hands," Mr Adams said yesterday. "He has to tell David Trimble this agreement is going to stand and this agreement is going to be implemented."
Mr Blair had described the agreement as "the best opportunity for peace this century" in Northern Ireland. "Is that going to be allowed to go down the tubes because the Ulster Unionist Party wants something that is not possible at this time, and is clearly outside the agreement?" Mr Adams asked.
Sir Reg Empey, a senior UUP Assembly member, accused Mr Adams of making "a hysterical outburst". Mr Adams had to accept that decommissioning was a fundamental aspect of the Belfast Agreement. "He and Sinn Fein have lost the argument over disarmament and they are trying to find a scapegoat for their predicament," he said. "If disarmament is not deliverable why then did Adams and [Martin] McGuinness support the Mitchell report [on decommissioning] of 1995 and that section of the agreement which requires all those who hold office to be totally committed to peaceful means and opposed to the use or the threat of force?
"Does he believe that anybody is going to believe that Sinn Fein is so committed while a fully armed and operational IRA is outside the executive door? The republican movement has to do its share to build confidence throughout the community."
Mr Seamus Mallon, the North's Deputy First Minister who will receive a Man of the Year award in Philadelphia tonight from the city's Brehon Law Society, said the public was willing the politicians to make the agreement work.
"I urge that the current impasse in the political process be quickly overcome so that we can get down to what we have been elected as politicians to do - deliver good government that makes a real difference to people's lives," he said in New York yesterday.
The Alliance leader, Mr Sean Neeson, insisted that decommissioning was an essential component of the full implementation of the agreement. "I believe there is a strong moral obligation on the republican and loyalist paramilitaries to start making decommissioning gestures now to provide the confidence which is required to move the process forward."
Mr Alex Maskey, a Sinn Fein Assembly member, yesterday criticised the SDLP MP for South Down, Mr Eddie McGrady, for his complaint that Sinn Fein and the UUP were refusing to budge from fixed positions.
"Over the past weeks, particularly since the Hillsborough discussions, the SDLP have attacked Sinn Fein for rejecting the two governments' declaration and have repeatedly accused Sinn Fein of causing the present impasse. This is a clear distortion of the truth," he said.
"The widely acknowledged reality is that the Hillsborough Declaration was a massive shift away from the Good Friday agreement, a shift driven by the UUP's demands for IRA decommissioning as a precondition to the establishment of the political institutions agreed on Good Friday."
The SDLP Assembly member for South Belfast, Dr Alasdair McDonnell, said any parking of the agreement would only deepen the political vacuum.
