President Clinton urged Northern Ireland party leaders yesterday to "lift their sights above the short-term difficulties" when he was presented with shamrock by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, in the Rose Garden of the White House. Earlier, the North's First Minister and Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble, had for the first time indicated that he was prepared to meet the Garvaghy Road residents in Portadown.
Asked at a news conference in Washington if a meeting could take place, he said: "That is something that is a possibility but I would want to know that it would result in a positive outcome."
President Clinton yesterday had a series of one-to-one meetings with the North's party leaders to work on the limited room for manoeuvre to find a resolution of the decommissioning impasse.
Before the meetings, the President said that in only a short few weeks, it would be time to bring the new institutions to life so the people of Northern Ireland could finally begin "to take their destinies" into their own hands. "To fully implement the Good Friday agreement, the parties simply must resolve their differences. To do it, they have to have the same spirit of co-operation and trust that led to the first agreement.
"They must set their sights above the short-term difficulties. They must see that distant horizon where children will grow up in an Ireland trouble-free and not even remember how it used to be."
Mr Ahern said the point had been reached where "only one obstacle remains blocking agreement on the launch of the new political institutions which our people have mandated". Though Mr Clinton steered away from directly intervening on the decommissioning "obstacle" in his statement at the shamrock-presentation ceremony, Mr Ahern made clear the issue had been fully discussed at their half-hour meeting afterwards. Mr Ahern said he asked Mr Clinton to assist them - particularly Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionist Party - to try to find "some means of political creativity" to find a solution to the issue of decommissioning.
The President articulated very clearly to him that the room for manoeuvre was limited "but we have to work on that limited room to find a resolution".
Mr Ahern said Mr Clinton was conscious that decommissioning was not a precondition, but the political imperatives were that Mr Gerry Adams and Mr Trimble were very important to the agreement. They had to find a resolution which was acceptable.
"He is as conscious as we are that any false move that forces one side against the other will be no good. He is totally in agreement that a resolution now is better than parking, stalling or reversing the process because the security situation will unravel." Mr Ahern pointedly told the Speaker's lunch on Capitol Hill, attended by Mr Clinton, that any parking or stalling of decommissioning was really reversing and this was not an alternative.
Calling for a resolution of the issue "with everybody giving a bit", Mr Ahern said to contemplate failure did not make sense when the alternative was so bleak.
The alternative, he said, was to go into the marching season with a security situation which would inevitably deteriorate, with frustration from the Assembly members that they could not get on with their duties, the failure to set up the executive or move ahead on the North-South dimension where the implementation bodies and areas of co-operation were agreed, and the failure to set up the British-Irish Council and the Intergovernmental Conference.
"All of these things have to be put on ice if we do not face this one issue," Mr Ahern said. "The agreement stands together and, unfortunately, will fall together."
