Ahead of a crucial summit meeting with the Taoiseach in London tomorrow, the British Prime Minister has turned the spotlight back on the paramilitaries, demanding an "absolute commitment to decommissioning".
Mr Blair will meet Mr Ahern immediately after Cardinal Basil Hume's funeral at Westminster Cathedral. Official sources said the two leaders might travel to Belfast later for talks with party leaders, before next week's intensive negotiations leading to the June 30th devolution deadline.
Setting the context for those negotiations in the House of Commons yesterday, Mr Blair told the Conservative leader, Mr William Hague: "There are two essential foundation blocks for this to work. One is that everyone accepts there is an inclusive executive that involves all parties that are committed to peace. And the second, that there has to be decommissioning."
Mr Blair's comments follow confirmation that the head of the International Commission, Gen John de Chastelain, has been asked to produce a report by Tuesday. The Ulster Unionist security spokesman, Mr Ken Maginnis, insisted it be made public. Under close questioning from Mr Hague, the Prime Minister said he held to commitments given during last year's referendum campaign that the removal of violence and the threat of it "doesn't just mean decommissioning, but all bombing, killings, beatings, and an end to targeting, recruiting and all the structures of terrorism".
Mr Hague said that beatings and shootings were continuing to be carried out by organisations which had signed the Belfast Agreement, and that "terrorist structures remain fully operation." And he pressed Mr Blair that the real obstacle to progress was the refusal of paramilitary groups to decommission weapons.
Mr Blair told him: "Well, they do have to decommission their weapons. That is clear, that is an obligation under the agreement."
Welcoming that, Mr Hague then asked for an undertaking that the Prime Minister would "not ask the First Minister (Mr Trimble) to enter a Northern Ireland executive with Sinn Fein until there has been a credible and verifiable start to a decommissioning process that ends with total disarmament by May next year".
Side-stepping that, Mr Blair outlined his "two essential foundation blocks" and told Mr Hague: "My view throughout has been that the sequencing is a matter for negotiation, and that can be judged by the parties. But there must be no question at all that decommissioning is an obligation under the agreement."
Recalling the Hillsborough declaration before Easter, Mr Blair repeated this was "an obligation deriving from the commitments in the agreement, and that it should take place within the time-scale envisaged in the agreement and through the efforts of the international commission".
Looking to next week's negotiations and "one last chance to push for peace", Mr Blair told MPs: "There is a negotiation we must have, and I hope all parties will approach it with an open mind. But the key thing first of all is to get straight whether people do agree these two foundation blocks. I don't yet know whether they do. We've not actually had from any paramilitary group an absolute commitment to decommissioning at all, on any time-scale. Well, we need to be sure of these things before we can move it forward."
Sources close to Mr Trimble last night insisted that "forms of words" purporting to offer the "certainty of achievement" of decommissioning would not work, and that acceptance of an "obligation" to decommission would have to be accompanied by a start and finishing date for any decommissioning process.
Gerry Moriarty adds from Belfast: Gen. de Chastelain's commission has written to the Northern parties - in particular those linked to paramilitaries - seeking hard information on whether guns will be handed over by May 22nd next year. He is seeking answers "no later" than this Monday. Meanwhile, Mr James Lyons, special adviser on economic initiatives to President Clinton, called on Northern Ireland's business and political community to throw its weight behind the Belfast Agreement.