“If everybody moves, we can have elections, a working executive and all that was in the agreement,” Ahern said, implying the IRA would have to move significantly within two weeks.
Trimble said “massive decommissioning” and “an effective disbanding” of the IRA are his demands in return for agreeing to reconstitute a power-sharing Executive with Sinn Fein.
Sinn Fein said there’s no way it would even ask the IRA to move again unless the British government announces an early date for Assembly elections.
Both sides, it appears, therefore, are in a Catch-22 position — with each demanding movement from the other first.
Ahern said in Dublin on Monday that even if anything has been agreed by the cut-off date, an election “brings us to the end of October. We are not in that position today. So everything after today is pushing us into November.
“That is the reality of it, so we are going to try to do as much as we can in the next two weeks. We have to really move now. Otherwise, we are pushing it back into November and that is not a great idea.”
Trimble said an end to paramilitarism is required and major action on decommissioning if the Assembly is to be restored.
“We want to see a complete end to paramilitary activity in a context where we can sure it doesn’t come back,” he said.
He added that the Independent Monitoring Commission, to adjudicate whether paramilitary groups have broken their ceasefires or political parties have broken their commitments under the agreement, is a step forward.
“In the new dispensation, if there is any continuing paramilitary activity, it will be spotted and responsibility clearly attributed,” Trimble said, adding that the time frame for an election was short.
“It does really boil down to achieving a breakthrough over the next few weeks,” he said, hoping the positive summer would help the parties move forward.
At a meeting at the British prime minister’s official residence at Chequers on Saturday, the Irish and British governments agreed a timetable of three weeks of intensive meetings intended to bring a November poll.
That timetable began this week with meetings involving Minister for Foreign Affairs Brian Cowen, the SDLP, the UUP, British Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy, and Sinn Fein.
Talks are also expected to be held among the pro-agreement parties in Northern Ireland following those already held between Sinn F