BRITISH PRIME minister Gordon Brown is today expected to urge Sinn Féin and the DUP to end a stand-off that is threatening the stability of the Northern Executive and Assembly.
Mr Brown will address MLAs in the Assembly chamber at Parliament Buildings, Stormont, this afternoon and later speak privately to First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness. He will also hold additional private talks with the leaders of the five main parties, including Alliance.
Mr Brown, publicly and privately, is expected to lay emphasis on ensuring that the current political impasse is resolved. The prime minister is also likely to make clear that the British government favours the speedy completion of devolution, including the transfer of policing and justice powers to the Northern Executive.
The prime minister’s visit also coincides with publication of a Northern Ireland Office sponsored poll which Northern Secretary Shaun Woodward said showed that 58 per cent of people in the North support the devolution of policing and justice powers to the Executive within 12 months.
The prime minister will be visiting Stormont as the DUP and Sinn Féin continue to hold high-level talks aimed at staving off a political crisis.
It remained unclear last night whether Thursday’s meeting of the Executive, which has not met since mid-June, will proceed as scheduled.
Previously, Sinn Féin’s leader in the Dáil, Caoimhghín Ó Caoláin, warned that the party’s Ministers would walk away from the Executive if issues such as policing and justice, the Irish language and education reform were not settled.
As negotiations continued between the DUP and Sinn Féin, senior party members appeared intent on not saying or doing anything that would wreck the prospects of progress in these talks.
Senior Sinn Féin MLA John O’Dowd, while not repudiating Mr Ó Caoláin’s threat, said this was a “worst-case scenario” and that position had not yet been reached. On Sunday Mr O’Dowd indicated that because of insufficient movement in the talks it was unlikely the Executive would meet on Thursday.
But in the Assembly yesterday he said that Sinn Féin hoped the Executive would meet on Thursday but based on “equality, partnership and powersharing”.
Mr Robinson, also speaking in the chamber, said the situation required more of him “than grandstanding and scoring party political points”. “What I do say is I would be deeply disappointed . . . if the Executive does not meet on Thursday,” he added.
Mr Robinson did say, however, that if the Executive fails to meet “then other institutions start to freeze as well”, which was a reference to the North-South Ministerial Council and the British-Irish Council and other institutions of the Belfast Agreement being stalled.
SDLP leader Mark Durkan said that Sinn Féin would end up in “David Trimble country” if Thursday’s meeting was not held. “He blocked meetings of the North-South Ministerial Council and held back business for tactical political reasons . . . That would play into the hands of the DUP and Jim Allister,” he added.
