Adams and Paisley get ready to seal deal

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Paisley and Adams get ready to seal a deal

Old foes to hold historic face-to-face talks today

IAN Paisley will today end a lifetime's hostility to Sinn Fein when he is expected to hold his first face-to-face meeting with Gerry Adams.

Mr Paisley is set to seek Mr Adams' agreement to a final delay in restoring a power-sharing devolved government for the North.

It follows historic talks between the DUP and Sinn Fein behind closed doors last night as both sides attempted to break the deadlock before today's deadline set by the British and Irish Governments.

The bitter political rivals held talks for the first time as the clock ticked away towards the final crucial hours to the deadline for the restoration of power-sharing.

Direct Stormont contact between Mr Paisley and Mr Adams today now seems the only way of getting the Executive back in operation before the two governments jointly take over the running of the North.

An agreement between the key parties could lead to formal Stormont talks, under the guise of being a "preparation for government", which could help buy more time.

The dramatic developments came after the DUP ruling executive voted to go into government but sought an extension of six weeks before doing so.

The DUP's defiant decision not to meet today's devolution deadline left the British government facing a crucial call on whether to close Stormont or allow more time for negotiations.

North Secretary Peter Hain said the DUP commitment to share power in May in itself marked a breakthrough.

"This is the first time the DUP has said they will share power with Sinn Fein," he said.

"People said this would never happen and it is a breakthrough."

Mr Hain added: "We are in entirely new territory. The St Andrews process had brought us to a point which some people said at the turn of the year was inconceivable."

But he said they had set out the course they were going to take, adding: "If the parties are not going to do it our way through this route, then they have to do it their way. However, parties are going to have to come forward with consensus and tell us what they want to do."

Mr Hain yesterday signed an official order restoring power to the 108-seat Assembly from midnight but this will be revoked within hours unless a compromise can be hammered out between the DUP and Sinn Fein.

As the negotiations continued last night, Mr Hain again insisted it was "devolution or dissolution" today unless the parties nominated their ministers or came to some agreement on the date for power sharing.

Failure to reach agreement by today, Mr Hain warned, would mean the relationship between Dublin and London would be deepened and direct rule would continue in Belfast.

"Success would be devolution, failure would be dissolution," he said. "I don't at the moment see it any other way. I only see it our way."

"If there is another way, if the parties have got their own way, then they need to jointly agree it and come back to me pretty quickly because otherwise the law kicks in and there's nothing I can do about it," Mr Hain added.

As expected the DUP's ruling executive committee overwhelmingly voted to go into government with Sinn Fein with the stipulation that this should not happen for the six to eight weeks.

Mr Paisley and his supporters are proposing to bridge the gap between now and May with what it calls preparatory work, departmental pre-briefings and finalising the programme for government.

DUP politicians are pressing the British to push through emergency legislation in the House of Commons today extending the deadline - a move guaranteed to anger the other Assembly parties.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern warned the DUP position was something the Irish government could not live with although he conceded there was still a lot of talking going on.

"It appears to me that the DUP probably would not have carried a motion to move forward," said Mr Ahern. "They had their own internal difficulties."

He said it was "disappointing" but added: "We just have to see how we work our way through this."

Mr Ahern met British Prime Minister Tony Blair in Berlin on the margins of the EU's 50th anniversary celebrations, having spoken to him several times the previous day.

Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams said if the DUP wanted a functioning Assembly that could only happen through direct dialogue with republicans and the other parties.

As the political poker game continued, it was being suggested last night that the DUP had reached an understanding with the British government on Friday last about an extension to the devolution deadline.

But SDLP leader Mark Durkan insisted today's deadline must be met as any reversal would be a clear breach of the London government's commitments.

"There is a real danger that any new legislation will leave us in a twilight zone where no doubt Sinn Fein will look for more concessions in return for the legislation and the DUP will use those concessions as a further excuse for avoiding sharing power," he said.

Jeffrey Donaldson of the DUP insisted his party's commitment to power-sharing was "clear an unequivocal".

Gene McKenna and Dominic Cunningham

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