Murphy chairs first GFA working sessions

Secretary of State Paul Murphy today chaired the first working sessions of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement review.

The meeting, which took place at Stormont, follows last week's roundtable opening session which saw the main local political parties read statements outlining their positions.

While Mr Murphy maintained that the parties wanted a return to devolution, there was, as ever, disagreement's about how this should come about.

Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble said that the underlying problem with the current deadlock was the failure of the IRA to engage in acts of completion.

“Unless there are meaningful, confidence-building acts of completion there is no real prospect of progress in these review sessions. In fact the review can only serve to mask the underlying problem," he said.

However, Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams said the spotlight should not be on decommissioning but about better delivery of the Agreement.

The DUP, however, want to see a radical overhaul of the Agreement and are seeking to find a means to achieve this goal. Deputy leader of the DUP Peter Robinson said that the party had an agenda that would allow all the issues to be discussed during the review talks.

The SDLP leader Mark Durkan said he was not prepared to accept a review process that involved "private deals".

The Northern Ireland Assembly was suspended in October 2002 following an alleged republican spy-ring within Stormont.

(MB)