A Sombre mood descended on Westminster yesterday as the Northern Ireland Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, confirmed the British and Irish governments would start a review of the implementation of the Belfast Agreement after the failure to establish the North's power-sharing executive.
After the acrimony of the proceedings at the Assembly and the Ulster Unionist Party's boycott of the session, Dr Mowlam told MPs in the Commons that the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, and the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, would meet next week to announce the "arrangements, agenda and timetable" of the review. The review will take place under paragraph four of the review section of the agreement, but real progress is unlikely to be made before October, when Parliament returns from the summer recess, Downing Street said.
"The reality is that we move forward together, or we do not move forward at all," Dr Mowlam said in an emergency statement. "Today is a setback. It would be foolish to deny that. But it would be even more foolish to conclude that the Good Friday agreement cannot continue."
As events unfolded in Belfast, Dr Mowlam told MPs the refusal of the UUP, the Democratic Unionist Party, and the Alliance Party to nominate ministerial portfolios meant she had acted immediately to undo the appointment of ministers designate.
Dr Mowlam said her government did not seek to blame any party for yesterday's failure and the currently "fragile" state of the ceasefires would not hold if politicians began naming names. Appealing for a period of reflection, she said: "The last thing the people of Northern Ireland need now is an outbreak of recriminations. I believe all those who supported the agreement when it was made genuinely wanted to see it implemented." Putting a brave face on a "very serious setback", Dr Mowlam said there was still consensus between the parties on issues such as the principle of consent; the formation of a fully inclusive government; the need to respect both traditions and the decommissioning of arms in a manner determined by Gen de Chastelain.
Such a "massive consensus" was inconceivable before the Belfast Agreement, and Dr Mowlam said she now placed her faith in the people of Northern Ireland. "I know today they will be bitterly disappointed. Over this year, in both communities, they have shown that the very strongest of disagreements can be expressed peacefully.
"For their sake, we, the Irish Government and all the Northern Ireland parties must not be disheartened. We must continue to work to implement the agreement the people have approved."
The Way Forward document produced by the British and Irish governments was a "balanced approach which could have succeeded". If commitments on decommissioning or devolution had been breached, there was a failsafe, and parties would not have been expected to continue in government with those in default. Amendments to the Northern Ireland Bill had been judged to reassure Unionists that the government was serious about the failsafe mechanisms.
The Northern Ireland Bill will not be withdrawn, because the failsafe clauses may be necessary to underpin an eventual agreement between the parties, but it will not proceed at "emergency speed" through the House of Lords.
As news filtered through from the Assembly that the deputy first minister designate, Mr Seamus Mallon, had resigned, Dr Mowlam paid tribute to his work and said she hoped he would stand for ministerial office again. "He will be greatly missed in Northern Ireland in that job because his contribution has been important and crucial in holding it together. I hope he can see his way to stand again for an office in the Assembly in the months and years ahead, because without him it is a sadder place."
Despite Dr Mowlam's appeal, recriminations quickly followed her statement. The Conservatives immediately called for a halt to the prisoner release scheme, laying the blame for the failure to make progress on republican and loyalist paramilitaries. As jeers from the Labour benches were heard around the chamber, the Conservative Northern Ireland spokesman, Mr Andrew Mackay, urged the government to recognise that paramilitaries were to blame.
But Dr Mowlam told the Conservatives that the ceasefires were holding and prisoner releases could be halted only if evidence proved they had been breached rather than acting on "hearsay, allegation."
The UUP MP, the Rev Martin Smyth, apologised to the Commons for Mr David Trimble's absence, saying he believed Dr Mowlam's statement was to be made later in the day. He rejected a suggestion from the Labour MP, Mr Tony Benn, that "old unionism" was not interested in sharing power with Catholics. Mr Smyth insisted unionism's critics were "following the big lie of Sinn Fein" and he accused the government of spinning a distorted version of the negotiations. In the House of Lords, discussion concentrated on Dr Mowlam's statement. Lord Dubs, the junior Northern Ireland Minister, said he hoped Mr Mallon would soon return to a key position in the Assembly, and echoing his sentiments, the Conservative peer, Lord Glentoran, said he hoped the SDLP deputy leader would not stay on the touch-lines for too long.
The former Labour minister, Baroness Castle, said most peers felt "a total sense of loss, of desolation". The former SDLP leader, Lord Fitt, blamed the failure to decommission for the collapse of the process, but the Liberal Democrat peer, Lord Redesdale, said failure was brought about by unionist refusal to nominate ministers to the executive.