Blair and Bush declare UN will have 'vital role'

3.00pm

Tony Blair and George Bush ended two days of summitry in Northern Ireland by declaring themselves to be at one on the question of UN involvement in post-war Iraq - the organisation would have "a vital role".

The two leaders also pressed Northern Ireland parties for an early peace process breakthrough, saying a historic opportunity would be created by publication of a joint London-Dublin document tomorrow.

The summit, which also covered the Middle East, was the third meeting between the two men in three weeks.

They stressed the closeness of Anglo-American relations, with Downing Street hoping that the perception of differences over the UN can be laid to rest.

President Bush, asked whether Saddam Hussein had been killed in a coalition air strike, replied: "I don't know if he survived. The only thing I know is he is losing power."

Echoing this Mr Blair said: "In all parts of the country our power is strengthening, the regime is weakening and Iraqi people are turning towards us. Anyone who has seen the joy on the faces of people in Basra knows that this was indeed a war of liberation, not of conquest."

The summit, which was also attended by Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and US Secretary of State Colin Powell, appeared to be largely informal, with Mr Blair and Mr Bush dining together and walking together in the grounds of Hillsborough Castle near Belfast.

Anti-war protesters were kept well away from the Castle by police cordons using dozens of armoured vehicles.

The two leaders were joined by Irish Taoiseach Bertie Ahern for brief meetings with major Northern Ireland parties including Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionists.

The three leaders later issued a joint statement declaring: "The break with paramilitarism in all its past forms must be complete and irrevocable."

London, Dublin and Washington hope that a peace process breakthrough will be teed up by the document to be released tomorrow. It will map out proposals on demilitarisation, policing, equality and other issues, in the expectation that the IRA will respond with a major move on weaponry.

Although many harbour high hopes, both the government and Sinn Fein last night cautioned that there was "no done deal."

Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams said they had "frank" discussions with Mr Bush though there had been no discussion of the "acts of completion" which London and Dublin are pressing for.

Rejecting the idea that Sinn Fein could be punished for alleged IRA misbehaviour, he warned: "This party is not going to be accountable for anything other than ourselves. We are not going to buy into or acquiesce to notional views that we are in some way going to represent someone else."

Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble said American involvement had been helpful, saying that in their talks there had been "general encouragement and exhortation".

Mark Durkan, leader of the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour party, said that during his meeting with Mr Bush he had handed him a petition against the war in Iraq as well as postcards from anti-war campaigners.

Downing Street confirmed last night that Kofi Annan, the UN Secretary General, would visit London later this week to discuss post-Iraq issues. However, Shashi Tharoor, Mr Annan's under-secretary general, warned Britain and the US from appearing as "people dividing up the spoils of a conquest that they undertook".

In the most outspoken comments by the UN to date, Mr Tharoor insisted that a US-led administration would lack legal legitimacy.

It would have serious problems in selling oil or other exports from the country because it would lack the required legal title.

"The UN has no desire whatsoever to see Iraq as some sort of treasure chest to be divvied up," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

The US and the UK "really have no rights under the Geneva Conventions to transform the society or the polity or to exploit its economic resources or anything of that sort" he added.

"If they need to do more, they need to come to the Security Council to get the backing of international law for anything more ambitious than merely being an occupying power in the military sense. Mr Annan was not keen for the UN to take on the "poisoned chalice" of running Iraq. "

The UN is not the kind of private corporation that needs to increase its market share. We have quite enough to do elsewhere in the world and on other issues," he said.

But now that the war was reality, any interim Iraqi authority would need UN authorisation, Mr Thraroor said. If the US went ahead with an interim administration without Security Council backing, there would be "real difficulty in the extent to which other countries would be prepared to recognise this group as anything other than an offshoot or a branch of the military occupation in Iraq".

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