BELFAST MOVES: The Taoiseach and British Prime Minister, with a strong input from President Bush's special envoy on Northern Ireland, were last night striving to persuade the IRA to state "clearly and unambiguously" that its war is over.
With a substantially altered IRA response, Mr Ahern and Mr Tony Blair could yet return to Hillsborough today to present to the pro-Belfast Agreement parties their blueprint for restoring devolution, said one well-placed political source.
This is despite the pessimism after yesterday's planned unveiling of the document was abandoned.
Mr Ahern and Mr Blair were in direct contact with the Sinn Féin leadership from Downing Street, urging it to convey to the IRA that it must make linguistic changes to its statement of response to the British-Irish paper for reinstating the Executive and Assembly, sources told The Irish Times.
Mr Bush's specialist on Ireland, Mr Richard Haass, who was at Hillsborough on Tuesday, is today returning to Northern Ireland to try to use his influence and that of the US administration to persuade the IRA to amend its statement, they added.
Mr Haass is expected to meet a number of the parties, but to concentrate his attentions on Sinn Féin and the republican movement generally.
All sides - apart from Sinn Féin - were united in insisting that the IRA statement of response to the blueprint, which Mr Ahern and Mr Blair saw on Wednesday evening, was "totally inadequate" and had no chance of persuading unionists in particular that the IRA was demonstrating by word and deed that it was "going out of business".
Sources also told The Irish Times last night that people of influence in the Irish-American community in the US were also exerting pressure on the republican leadership to help avoid a political collapse.
The Sinn Féin president, Mr Gerry Adams, said on BBC last night that people were "spinning" against Sinn Féin to create the impression that any failure to strike a deal rested with republicans.
"The responsibility for not publishing this joint declaration lies with the British Prime Minister and Taoiseach, and they should publish it."
Mr Adams would not reply when asked would he go to the IRA last night and suggest that it produce a clearer statement.
The SDLP leader, Mr Mark Durkan, agreed that the document should be published, but that the IRA statement of response should also be published to determine where the fault for this political crisis lay.
The UUP leadership said there was "a day or two" to salvage the chance of ensuring that the Stormont institutions could be restored.
