PMs to finalise peace plan

Tony Blair greets Bertie Ahern before the meeting

The British and Irish prime ministers are meeting to discuss their package of proposals aimed at breaking the deadlock in Northern Ireland's political process.

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern flew to UK Prime Minister Tony Blair's Sedgefield constituency in County Durham on Friday to discuss the rescue plan.

The two premiers had hoped to present their package on decommissioning, demilitarisation, policing and the future stability of the political institutions to the pro-Agreement parties on Friday.

But after speaking by telephone on Thursday evening, they agreed to take more time to review the situation.

They are expected to give a press conference later on Friday.

Jeffrey Donaldson: Call for a new series of negotiations

The parties are not expected to be presented with the package until next week.

The decision came after the Sinn Fein leadership and two hardline Ulster Unionist MPs expressed dissatisfaction with what they expected to see in the political package.

The current crisis was brought to a head by the resignation of Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble as Northern Ireland first minister on 1 July because the IRA had not begun to disarm.

However, on Thursday, Lagan Valley MP Jeffrey Donaldson and South Antrim MP David Burnside made it clear that they thought the current negotiations had only served to feed nationalists' and republicans' "insatiable demands".

In a statement withdrawing their support from the current process, they said it was a "danger to the Union".

Mr Burnside said on Friday: "The present negotiations and the negotiations over the last few weeks have increased the demands from Irish nationalism and Irish republicanism, rather than bringing them to a negotiating table where Sinn Fein/IRA will decommission.

"Therefore the whole process is ending up in a counter-productive result for Ulster Unionism."

However, Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness criticised the statement of Mr Burnside and Mr Donaldson.

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"One of the big difficulties about this process is establishing in the course of those discussions whether or not people, particularly political leaders within unionism, are in favour of the type of change that the Good Friday Agreement heralded."

Deputy leader of the SDLP, Seamus Mallon, said the sooner the governments delivered the package the better.

Gerry Adams: "Sinn Fein wants decommissioning"

"There are four issues to be considered - that is the issue of decommissioning, of policing, of normalisation and the protection of the institutions," he said.

"I expect that a package will contain explicit reference to each of those.

"It has go to be the type of package that parties can look at and say yes we can run with this, or no we can't."

Taoiseach Bertie Ahern met Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams and Mr McGuinness for three hours of talks in Dublin on Thursday evening.

They denied the meeting was a last minute attempt to squeeze more concessions on the package.

Mr Adams described the meeting, which he said included discussions on decommissioning as "detailed and satisfactory".

He added: "We don't run away from the issue of the decommissioning of weapons. We want to see it. We are working towards it," he said.