LONDON, Nov 29 (AFP) - Negotiations aimed at adding fresh impetus to Northern Ireland's stalled peace process are at a "very intensive stage", British Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Monday following new talks.
"We are obviously in a very intensive stage now," Blair said after unprecedented discussions with the chief of the province's once-Protestant dominated police and leaders of the Catholic Sinn Fein party.
"I think it is important that the meeting took place today," Blair said at his monthly press conference.
Protestant unionists, who support British rule, and Catholic republicans, who want a united Ireland, are studying an Anglo-Irish peace plan to revive partial home rule in the province, suspended for more than two years.
The talks come a day after Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams took a phone call from US President George W. Bush, who urged him to accept the proposals.
"There was good work done today, let's continue to do good work," Adams, whose party is the political wing of Northern Ireland's main Catholic paramilitary group, the Irish Republican Army (IRA), said after meeting Blair and Northern Ireland Chief Constable Hugh Orde.
Despite the positive signs, Blair was guarded against any undue optimism.
"Those occasions in which I've said I thought we were just about to get somewhere and then we go up another cul-de-sac have made me very wary of getting into the business of making any predictions for this week," he said.
Bush called Adams on Sunday, two days after having expressed the same sentiments to Ian Paisley, head of the province's biggest Protestant group, the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).
Paisley himself held crucial discussions in Belfast on Monday with the head of Northern Ireland's independent disarmament body, General John de Chastelain, on how further acts of IRA disarmament could be verified.
The search for a political agreement in Northern Ireland is at a "very delicate stage" and problems over IRA disarmament, also known as weapons decommissioning, still remain, Paisley said after a meeting lasting more than an hour.
"It really rests on the British government to carry out the promises that Blair has made on (IRA) decommissioning," he said. "If the decommissioning problem can be solved then we are on our way, but it is not solved at the present time."
Asked if there was a serious possibility that by the end of the year the IRA would have renounced arms clearly, Blair replied: "Whether it happens or not is not simply down to me, so let's see how the next few days go."
Blair and his Irish counterpart Bertie Ahern want an agreement reached by Tuesday on proposals presented to Catholic and Protestant parties on November 17 aimed at restoring the power-sharing government.
Paisley on Monday rejected the need for such urgency, saying: "There is no time line as far as I am concerned, I think it is nonsense."
Thirty years of inter-community bloodshed between Northern Ireland's Protestants and Catholics, which cost more than 3,600 lives, largely ended with the historic Good Friday agreement of 1998.
However a semi-autonomous government set up under the treaty was suspended in October 2002 amid a breakdown in confidence, and remains deadlocked despite a fresh round of elections a year ago.
Paisley, a 78-year-old veteran and Protestant hardliner, refuses to deal directly with Sinn Fein, and wants the IRA to be conclusively wound-up as a paramilitary organisation, giving up all its guns and explosives.
However many analysts doubt whether the IRA will agree to a specific DUP demand for weapons decommissioning to be fully photographed.
11/29/2004 14:39 GMT - AFP