Ahern: peace call

As David Trimble signals that he is prepared to quit in order to force the IRA to comply with the Good Friday agreement, the Irish prime minister, Bertie Ahern, has called for a renewed effort to breach the current impasse.

Ahead of a fresh round of peace talks, the Irish leader insisted that there was "no place for ongoing violence".

"The people have voted for that a long time ago, to get away from that violence. It is a period now to see what new moves we can make," he told Sky News.

He said it was "a good time for both Tony Blair and myself and the pro-Agreement parties to get together" in a bid to de-escalate the tensions.

"It is not a question of blaming anybody, I think it's just a question of renewing our support for the peaceful resolution of difficulties of the past, and to make sure that we can bring it on, and we don't slip back, even if it's only sporadic, even if only in some locations," he said.

Whilst he admitted there were problems, Ahern urged all sides to focus on the progress that has been made since the Good Friday agreement.

"At the same time, I think we should be conscious that while there has been some trouble, there's an enormous amount of very positive things happened in Northern Ireland, and we have to build on those, and try to build on the support for the agreement that is evidently there," he said.

Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble said the government should take sanctions against Sinn Fein and accused ministers of breaking their promises.

"We were given assurances, promises were made and the general perception, accurate in many cases, is that the promises have not been met," he said.

"They key thing that the government has to do is to give the people in Northern Ireland confidence that the law will be upheld," he said.

But Trimble, who on Saturday defeated an attempt to force Ulster Unionists to withdraw from the Stormont executive, said he would not wait for ever for action against Sinn Fein.

"I am able to say to people that I am the only who has voluntarily put himself out of office twice in order to sustain progress. I have resigned and I have ensured there was a suspension of the assembly in order to sustain progress," he said.

"When the circumstances are right, if it is necessary I am quite happy to do it [again]. But if I do it, it will be in order to make progress in order to ensure that the agreement is being fulfilled and fully implemented."

But the the hardline MP Jeffrey Donaldson said that the ministers should withdraw from the devolved administration unless Sinn Fein ministers are expelled by July 1.

Donaldson said that "the time for talking about the IRA and their failure to commit to peace is over".

"I for one am not prepared to be complicit in a process which turns a blind eye to IRA violence," he said before the meeting.

Trimble said it would be wrong to set arbitrary deadlines, but agreed to convene another meeting of the Ulster Unionist membership shortly.

"I'm not going to gamble with the future of Northern Ireland, I'm not going to gamble with the future of the people of Northern Ireland," he said on Saturday.

On Friday Tony Blair signalled his support for a fresh round of talks on the Good Friday agreement.

Northern Ireland secretary, Dr John Reid, said that the failure to make progress was undermining confidence in Northern Ireland.

"Let's be quite plain - violence is occurring on both sides," he said. "We will continue to review the ceasefires we will continue to counter by whatever means we can any level of parliamentary activity.

"But there is a problem in the process at the moment - that the journey away from violence towards exclusively peaceful means is continuing.

"That is why we have taken urgent action to address this in as open and frank a way as possible."