UK tries to salvage N. Ireland power-sharing deal

Britain increased the pressure on Northern Ireland's Catholics and Protestants to agree a timetable for sharing power after the province's main Protestant party rejected a Monday deadline set by London.

The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) of hardline cleric Ian Paisley said it wanted power-sharing delayed until May. Sinn Fein, political ally of the IRA guerilla group, opposes any delay in power-sharing.

Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain said London stood by its stance that the Northern Ireland assembly would be dissolved at midnight today unless Protestants and Catholics agree to go into government together by then.

But Mr Hain indicated that if the feuding parties could agree among themselves on another date for power-sharing, it might offer a way out of the deadlock.

"We can either do it our way through legislation... or the parties can do it their way," Mr Hain told reporters yesterday.

Britain and Ireland are pushing the DUP, which supports British rule in Northern Ireland, and the mainly Catholic Sinn Fein, which wants a united Ireland, to restore a power-sharing government to take over local decision-making from London.

Mr Hain signed an order transferring his decision-making powers in Northern Ireland to the assembly from midnight (2300 GMT) "because there's a chance that devolution will happen tomorrow".

The Northern Ireland assembly was set up under the 1998 Good Friday agreement that ended 30 years of conflict in which 3,600 people were killed. It was suspended in 2002 amid allegations of an Irish Republican Army (IRA) spy ring.

"There is no question of us acquiescing to a delay," Sinn Fein politician Alex Maskey told the BBC. "There's no credibility in this process if it continues the way it is."

Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said he had discussed the situation with British counterpart Tony Blair. The two leaders, who work closely together on Northern Ireland, are attending an EU summit in Berlin.

"Most people will think they (the DUP) have had more than enough time, and that's my view," Mr Ahern said. Nevertheless, if the parties come to a common position "that is something we would look at," he said, urging the parties to talk.