Leaders bid to rescue Ulster peace

Plan for elections to go ahead

John Major and the Irish Prime Minister, John Bruton, are planning talks today in a bid to keep the fragile Northern Ireland peace process on track.

The Prime Minister and the Taoiseach, who are due to speak on the telephone, are determined to press ahead with plans for elections to a negotiating body and for an all-Ireland referendum on peace to meet the 10 June deadline for all-party talks.

The promise of all-party talks is the only hope for rescuing the peace plan and persuading the IRA to resume the ceasefire. Last night, a Cabinet committee on Northern Ireland met for more than two hours in an effort to resolve deep differences between the Province's parties over how to elect their representatives for the talks.

The Government was having to steer a delicate path to avoid alienating the Ulster Unionists whose participation is crucial to the success of the all-party talks. At the same time, an electoral system unacceptable to Dublin and the Northern Ireland nationalist community could jeopardise the two governments' chances of beginning the talks before the promised deadline.

One option put to the meeting by Sir Patrick Mayhew, the Northern Ireland Secretary, was for a mixed or "hybrid" system of elections under which the nationalists might win more representation in the peace forum to be set up to thrash out plans for the future of Northern Ireland.

Mr Major, who chaired last night's meeting, has come under strong pressure from the Ulster Unionists - and some Tory backbenchers - to use the existing 18 Parliamentary constituencies in Ulster with five members in each being elected to the forum.

By contrast, both the nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party and Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists have been pressing for a single constituency system from which the 90 successful candidates would be chosen from one Province-wide ballot paper.

Dublin has been urging the Government to back the single constituency system to win the confidence of the nationalist community in Northern Ireland.

But both Mr Bruton and Dick Spring, the Irish foreign minister, have floated the possibility of a "hybrid" system, combining the electoral list, which is favoured by the nationalists, and the unionists' demands for the elections on 18 constituencies. That would allow some leading figures to hold secure seats in the forum without being elected under the first-past-the-post system from constituencies.

One option discussed last night was a 110-seat forum from which a much smaller group of negotiators would be chosen. David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader, warned that such a compromise would not work. "While we get some silly ideas floated around, at the end of the day, they will have to come down with something that is workable," he said.

He said the list system would be open to legal challenge, forcing the Government to delay the elections until late in the year. He also said it would require a substantial piece of legislation.

The Government's chances of securing Unionist support for a compromise had also been undermined by a separate but related row over the publication of an Anglo-Irish consultation document outlining the framework for the all-party talks. Mr Trimble told Sir Patrick at an acrimonious meeting yesterday that he believed the document was issued to "appease" the nationalists.

In the wake of warnings by John Taylor, the deputy leader of the Ulster Unionists, that his party might yet bring the Government down, Mr Trimble made strong objections at his meeting with Sir Patrick to what the party sees as a softening of the two governments' demand on the IRA to start decommissioning arms before talks progress.