The prime ministers of Ireland and Britain have presented Catholic leaders meeting in Dublin and Protestant leaders in London a blueprint aimed at breaking the deadlock on Northern Ireland power-sharing.
The plan offered Wednesday by British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern includes a commitment by the Irish Republican Army to permit Catholic and Protestant clerics to witness the organization's disarmament. The IRA proposal falls short of the detailed arms inventory sought by hard-line Protestants but opposed by the Catholic Sinn Fein party.
The two prime ministers have given the Northern Ireland adversaries one week to respond in a first step toward a return to the power-sharing arrangement created under the 1998 Good Friday peace accord.
That agreement was abandoned two years ago after Protestant lawmakers accused their Sinn Fein counterparts of spying.