Paisley, Adams in face to face talks today

Gerry Adams and Ian Paisley, fierce enemies in Northern Irish politics, are expected to hold historic first talks today as efforts intensify to restore local government in the province.

Though they have been locked in a battle over Northern Ireland's statehood for the past 35 years and often been in the same room together, the men who hold the key to ending political stalemate have never formally met or spoken. They will come face-to-face to discuss a way for Ian Paisley's pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Gerry Adams's Irish nationalist grouping, Sinn Fein, to share power in a locally elected assembly.

It will be a huge leap for Mr Paisley, 80, whose party refused to sign up to the 1998 Good Friday peace deal that established local government in Northern Ireland and which helped draw a line under a three-decade conflict in which 3,600 people died.

Written off as a spent force in the late 1990s, Mr Paisley has returned to the forefront of Northern Irish politics with the rise in support for hardline parties on both sides of the sectarian divide.

His largely Protestant DUP became the province's biggest political party in UK elections last year but its politicians studiously avoid talking to Sinn Fein members, even when sharing television studios or the Belfast assembly's canteen.

Todays's talks are part of plans put forward by Britain and Ireland on Friday that aim to get Northern Ireland's mothballed powersharing assembly up and running by next year.

It was suspended in 2002 over allegations of spying by Irish Republican Army (IRA) guerrillas who waged a 30-year campaign against British rule and London has ruled directly from Westminster ever since.

The DUP and Sinn Fein failed to reach a compromise on two issues during three days of intensive talks in Scotland last week: a DUP refusal to govern with Sinn Fein and Sinn Fein's reluctance to endorse local police.

But Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain was upbeat yesterday, telling the British parliament the talks had opened the way to "a new dawn for democracy in Northern Ireland" and may come to be seen as "a pivotal moment in Irish history".

He said he was confident the Republican movement would endorse the plan.

Mr Paisley has long opposed sharing power with Sinn Fein while it maintains links to the IRA. An IRA pledge last year to end violence has provided the spur to a deal.

If the British/Irish plan goes as the governments hope, Mr Paisley will be first minister in the assembly's governing executive. Sinn Fein negotiator Martin McGuinness, who has admitted having been an IRA member, will become his deputy. However the DUP, which favours continued British sovereignty over Northern Ireland, and Sinn Fein, which wants to unite the province with Ireland, still need to sell the plans.

Ian Paisley will need to convince his grass root support the time is right to share power with Sinn Fein, while Sinn Fein will need to persuade its predominantly Roman Catholic members to endorse Northern Ireland's Protestant-dominated police force.