Britain and Ireland resume their joint efforts this week to revive deadlocked peace talks in Northern Ireland, aiming to forge common ground between deeply opposed sectarian groups.
The meetings hosted on Wednesday by Irish Foreign Minister Brian Cowen and Paul Murphy, Britain's secretary of state for Northern Ireland, will include all of the province's political parties at the parliamentary building in Belfast.
But nearly two years after Northern Ireland's power-sharing assembly and executive were suspended, there will still be no collective talks, as the hardline Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) continues to refuse any direct negotiation with Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart Bertie Ahern will lead further talks with the Northern Ireland parties from September 16 to 18.
London and Dublin have been trying to breathe new life into the province's moribund political process, which broke down in October 2002 when claims of spying by the IRA led Britain to reimpose direct rule.
The crux of the conflict lies with mainly Catholic Sinn Fein, which wants the province reunited with Ireland, and the DUP, which like other loyalist parties wants it to remain part of Britain.
Both have been strengthened in recent elections and, bolstered by that mandate, are expected to bring a list of rival demands to the talks.
Sinn Fein, led by Gerry Adams, wants the DUP and other unionists to pledge to implement the Good Friday agreement, the historic 1998 deal which put into place the power-sharing government and led to a radical drop in sectarian violence.
In return, the republicans claim, they will ensure that the IRA disarms, disbands and declares its longstanding paramilitary campaign for independence over.
But the DUP, led by Ian Paisley, has said it will push for significant changes to the Good Friday accords.
Before it will sign up to another government with Sinn Fein, the party wants a six-month waiting period to ensure that the IRA has stuck to the pledge of non-violence.
Its deputy leader, Peter Robinson, warned that it would also call for greater limits on the role of "north-south bodies" created in the Good Friday deal to coordinate relations between Northern Ireland and Ireland.
"No unionist can be in the business of working for a united Ireland," Robinson said, adding that the party would oppose any "politically motivated" use of the bodies.
Former US president Bill Clinton and his wife, Senator Hillary Clinton, made an appeal to all parties to renew peace efforts during a visit last week to the region.
"I am encouraged by some of the comments in recent weeks," Bill Clinton said Thursday in Belfast after talks with the political parties.
When asked whether the IRA would decommission its armed groups, he replied: "I don't know." But when asked if Northern Ireland would see pre-1998 levels of violence, Bill Clinton said, "I don't think the people will allow the situation to go back to where it was."
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