Legislation allowing for new Northern Ireland Assembly elections was passed by the House of Commons tonight despite the Irish and British governments saying they are optimistic that new proposals they are preparing will be accepted by all pro-Agreement parties.
The regulations keep the option of elections open if the Assembly fails to elect new First and Deputy First ministers within six weeks.
It follows Mr David Trimble's resignation as First Minister on July 1st in protest at the IRA's failure to decommission.
Junior Northern Ireland minister Mr Des Browne told MPs that the Northern Ireland Assembly elections order 2001 was laid by the Government "purely as a precautionary measure", adding "this is contingency planning".
The new proposals for the implementation of the Belfast Agreement are being drawn up by the Irish and British governments and should be finalised by the end of the week.
The parties will have until August 12th - 6 weeks after Mr Trimble’s resignation - to agree to the proposals. If agreement is not reached the Prime Minister will have the option of calling new elections or suspending the institutions as a result of the First Minister, Mr Trimble’s resignation.
Both governments are optimistic that the proposals will be acceptable to the pro-Agreement parties but have warned that they will not be subject to negotiation.
The package of proposals will "hopefully" be put to all the pro-Agreement parties within the next couple of days, according to an Irish government spokesman.
"Mr Blair and Mr Ahern said that they had a very good feeling about what the document would contain," the spokesman said today.
However, the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, said on RTÉ Radio this afternoon the parties at last week’s talks at Weston Park in Shropshire must recognise all of their demands cannot be met. "There will pain and gain for everybody," the Minister said.
Although saying he was confident the parties were sincerely trying to achieve a breakthrough at last week’s talks, he also re-iterated there could be no further negotiation once the new proposals had been finalised.
An official spokesman for Mr Blair said the Weston Park talks should not be regarded as "parking the process, or a soft landing". Mr Blair was confident the governments could produce an agreement that could result in full implementation, he said.
He said today the two governments would be in touch in the coming days to "fine tune" the package.
Additional reporting PA