(2 Jul 1999) English/Nat
Negotiators have begun another day of talks aimed at salvaging the stalled Northern Ireland peace process.
They're trying to find some kind of an agreement before U-K Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart Bertie Ahern make a statement on the progress of their talks at Stormont.
Four days of intensive negotiations were adjourned on Thursday after the opposing sides, the Ulster Unionists and Sinn Fein, failed to reach an agreement on terms for disarmament by paramilitary organisations - especially the I-R-A.
British and Irish leaders- arrived at Stormont again on Friday morning for another day of gruelling talks on the future of Northern Ireland.
After failing for a second straight day to agree on forming a Protestant-Catholic government for Northern Ireland, negotiators have come perilously close to sinking the province's Good Friday peace accord.
All sides had been hoping for a breakthrough before July, the so-called "marching season," when hard-line Protestants parade across Northern Ireland and sectarian tensions run at their highest.
For the past three years, organized Catholic opposition to some key marches has transformed the situation into an annual crisis, with police and soldiers called upon to separate rival mobs.
Before entering the Stormont buildings Sinn Fein chief negotiator Martin McGuinness said the talks had reached their most difficult stage yet, and he urged Prime Minister Tony Blair to work to keep the peace process on track.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"The hopes of all those people out there, both young and old, but especially the young people are bound up in the decision we make. We are responsible for their life we are responsible for the future and we have a responsibility to ensure that we give them the type of leadership that they undoubtedly want. So we are going to go back in now and we are going to do our best and we are going to again put our shoulders to the wheel. Because it is in the hope and expectation that this British Prime Minister will not fail us and will not fail the peace process."
SUPER CAPTION: Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein chief negotiator
Talks this week - gruelling 18- and 12-hour sessions that ran past midnight Wednesday and Thursday - exhausted negotiators but failed to narrow the gap or ease the chronic mistrust between the two key parties.
The Ulster Unionists, Northern Ireland's major Protestant party, has demanded that the Irish Republican Army start to disarm before it will accept members of the I-R-A-allied Sinn Fein party into the new government.
The two leaders also were to unveil a report today by the head of the Northern Ireland disarmament commission, General John de Chastelain.
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