Deadline set for N Irish government

ARMAGH, Northern Ireland - Britain and Ireland have set a November deadline for restoring Northern Ireland's regional administration in a final push to persuade the province's feuding politicians to share power.

"The moment has come as we always knew it would for the ultimate decision," British Prime Minister Tony Blair told a news conference near the border with the Republic of Ireland.

Blair and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern unveiled plans to recall the Belfast assembly in May and give politicians six weeks to form a decision-making executive.

If, as many expect, that target is missed, an absolute deadline of November 24 will be set to re-establish power-sharing between majority Protestants committed to links with Britain and Roman Catholic nationalists who favour a united Ireland.

Failure to agree would mean deferral of the assembly -- set up under the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement that largely ended 30 years of violence -- and continued direct rule from London.

It would also result in the severance of assembly members' salaries, which have cost £85 million ($246 million) since the institution was suspended more than three years ago.

"At that point we close the chapter or we close the book," Blair said of the November limit, adding that, if it was missed, Dublin and London would work to increase North-South cooperation.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which represents the majority of pro-British Protestants and wants a step-by-step approach, said it would not be dictated to by Dublin and criticised the imposition of a deadline.

"Entrance to government cannot be dependent on a date but only when terror and crime carried out by those allied to a political party is gone forever," DUP leader Ian Paisley said.

The DUP refuses to share power with the Irish Republican Army's political ally Sinn Fein -- the dominant nationalist party -- until it is convinced the IRA is out of business.

It was a dispute over IRA activities that toppled the last regional executive but the group has since pledged to down arms.

Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams welcomed today's move: "The two governments are saying to the Unionists, and especially the DUP, that they have to decide if they are prepared to join the rest of us in moving forward in partnership."

Eamon Phoenix, politics lecturer at Stranmillis College in Belfast, said it was unlikely the DUP would be in any hurry to bow to pressure from Blair or Ahern, however. "This is very much a gambler's last throw really," he said.

- REUTERS