Crisis in N. Irish peace deal over IRA arms

Britain and the IRA were under intense pressure to reveal details of the armed group's latest act of disarmament yesterday after a much trumpeted attempt to bring final peace to Northern Ireland ended in fiasco.

The province's main Protestant leader David Trimble was in London for talks with ministers, a day after rejecting the Irish Republican Army's biggest ever weapons move as too secretive.

"Recovery would be very simple - let the (British) prime minister (Tony Blair) put the information he has in the public domain," Mr Trimble told the BBC.

"Let the republicans remove from (arms monitor General John) de Chastelain the limitations that have prevented him from giving a full report - let him do so."

Mr Trimble held a brief meeting with Gerry Adams, head of the IRA's political ally Sinn Fein, late on Tuesday night, and further talks were planned in the coming days.

"We were left standing at the altar," Mr Adams told a news conference at his party headquarters in staunchly Catholic west Belfast yesterday. "Republicans did deliver as agreed."

The Sinn Fein leader said Mr Trimble's move had left the peace process facing "profound difficulties" which need to be solved in the next few days.

Mr Blair and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, who went to Belfast on Tuesday expecting to seal the most significant advance since the 1998 Good Friday peace deal, found themselves embarrassed and disappointed as the deal collapsed.

Back in London yesterday, Mr Blair said that if details of the IRA's latest destruction of weapons were allowed to become public, all sides in the province would be convinced of the importance of the guerilla group's action.

De Chastelain, the retired Canadian general charged with overseeing guerilla disarmament, confirmed on Tuesday that the IRA had destroyed automatic rifles, explosives and other weapons but under the terms of his role, is not allowed to go further.

"I agree it is an unsatisfactory situation and it's what we are trying to resolve at the moment," Mr Blair told parliament.