N.Ireland poll goes ahead as scheduled: Blair

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, October 29, 2003

N.Ireland poll goes ahead as scheduled: Blair

Northern Ireland's elections will go ahead as scheduled on November 26 although the intensive talks over the Irish Republican Army (IRA)'s disarmament have broken down, Downing Street said Tuesday.

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Northern Ireland's elections will go ahead as scheduled on November 26 although the intensive talks over the Irish Republican Army (IRA)'s disarmament have broken down, Downing Street said Tuesday.

Negotiations have failed to bridge the gap between Ulster Unionists' demands for clarity over the IRA's third disarmament and the IRA's reluctance to spell out in more details what weaponry had been decommissioned, Downing Street confirmed.

However, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said in a statement the setback in negotiations "should not obscure the major steps forward taken by the republican movement."

Blair said the government will work urgently after the elections "to create the conditions which will enable a working executive to be formed."

Despite "lengthy and constructive engagement" with the leadership of the Ulster Unionists, it was not possible to reach agreement in terms which were "conducive to creating public confidence on all sides," he said.

The Northern Ireland Assembly elections were postponed in May over what the British government called a lack of clarity about the IRA's future intentions.

Last week, the IRA, an outlawed paramilitary group that fought British rule for three decades before calling a cease-fire in 1997,carried out its third and largest disarmament, but Ulster Unionists rejected the act as too secretive.

Analysts pointed out that if a deal could not be reached between the IRA's political ally Sinn Fein and Ulster Unionists, the assembly of Protestants and Catholics, established under the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement, would hardly function after the poll.

Northern Ireland has been plagued by three decades of politicaland sectarian violence between Protestants committed to keeping the union with Britain and Catholics who want to end it and unite with the Irish Republic.

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