Sinn Féin president Mr Gerry Adams has called for the drafting of a "Green Paper on Irish unity" containing proposals on how the Government could attain a united Ireland.
Speaking at an Easter Rising commemoration at Glasnevin Cemetery in Dublin yesterday, Mr Adams said Sinn Féin would be pushing for such an initiative after the general election.
"Here, today, I am formally calling on all the parties to embark on a process of drawing up a Green Paper on Irish unity in consultation with all interested parties and groups. Sinn Féin will naturally make a careful and studied input to such a process. But we also think that an alliance for Irish unity is needed which will draw upon all persons and organisations who are committed to that end."
He stressed: "Irish unity must cease to be an abstraction and become a concrete proposition."
Mr Adams was addressing about 2,000 people who had marched to the cemetery from the GPO. A message from the IRA leadership was read and a minute's silence observed for the republican dead of 1916.
Mr Adams expressed concern at the arrest of republicans in Belfast and Derry at the weekend, and criticised the Government for its refusal to release republican prisoners from Castlerea Prison, Co Roscommon. Such prisoners should be released under the terms of the Belfast Agreement and it was "totally unacceptable" that the Government was refusing to do so.
At a similar event in Drumboe, Co Donegal, Sinn Féin's Education Minister Mr Martin McGuinness claimed the republican struggle had reached its "end phase". He said: "I earnestly believe that we have begun the countdown to a united Ireland and are continuing to get that message out as widely as possible."
At a commemoration in Monaghan, Sinn Féin TD Mr Caoimhín Ó Caoláin extended an invitation to Northern Ireland's First Minister Mr David Trimble to address a joint session of the Houses of the Oireachtas. He said he had confidence the invitation would be endorsed by other parties.
"While others have dismissed David Trimble's call for a referendum in the six counties next year, we have said that it would provide an opportunity to focus on the Irish unity debate," said Mr Ó Caoláin.
Meanwhile, Labour Party leader Mr Ruairí Quinn yesterday urged the Government to compile and publish a definitive list of all who died during the War of Independence and the Civil War.
"There are police and military records listing those who died on the British side and there is also information on virtually all those who died in combat on the IRA side. But there is no list of con-combatants who were killed accidentally, in error, or indeed in the wrong," he said.
• The Continuity IRA has urged republicans not to be "conned" into supporting the Police Service of Northern Ireland, writes Suzanne Breen, Senior Northern Correspondent. The paramilitary group said the force was merely a repackaged version of the RUC.
In an Easter statement in the name of "the leadership of the republican movement", CIRA praised those who continued to resist British rule. Traditionally, this statement is a joint one from the leadership of both the political and military wings of republican organisations.
Security sources say Sinn Féin is CIRA's political wing, a claim the party denies. The statement accused the Provisional IRA of "the act of ultimate treachery" in decommissioning weapons.
