Blair and Ahern cancel Belfast visit

Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern shelved plans yesterday to visit Belfast to publish their proposals for breathing new life into the peace process.

The Prime Minister and Taoiseach had hoped to travel to Northern Ireland before today, the fifth anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. But they concluded that the IRA's planned response to their blueprint would not go far enough to persuade David Trimble's Ulster Unionist Party to return to the power-sharing assembly and executive, which were suspended last October.

Contacts with the republican movement will continue over the weekend in the hope that the IRA will agree to toughen up its language on decommissing its weapons and ceasing paramilitary activity.

Mr Blair and Mr Ahern will review the position next Tuesday and, if there is enough movement, they will return to Belfast. But without any breakthrough, the issue could be put on hold until the autumn.

There was gloom in London and Dublin last night that the symbolic moment of today's anniversary had not helped to break the latest deadlock. Time is running out for a breakthrough, with assembly elections due on 29 May.

The blueprint agreed by the two governments covers the scaling down of the Army presence in Northern Ireland, policing, justice, the stability of the power-sharing institutions and a scheme which would enable IRA terror suspects who fled the province to return home without being jailed.

In an interview with the republican newspaper An Phoblacht, Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, said he found it "incredible" that the governments had not launched their document.

He insisted: "I have seen and read closely the IRA statement. I can tell you that it is clear and unambiguous. And the importance and enormity of this move should not be lost on the governments. I find it incredible that they have not yet acted on the basis of this unprecedented contribution."