Northern Ireland process in disarray

Breakfast spoke to the Sinn Fein chairman

The peace process in Northern Ireland has been thrown into disarray by the Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble.

He upset carefully choreographed moves yesterday when he insisted the IRA had not been transparent and specific enough about the weapons handed over to be destroyed.

But Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, said his party and the IRA faced a new and difficult task managing the process.

"One person's act of transparent decommissioning is another person's act of humiliation," he said.

But Tony Blair says assembly elections will go ahead as planned next month.

Breakfast heard regular live reports from outside Downing Street and Hillsborough Castle in Belfast.

Our correspondent Mark Simpson told us that the outlook was very gloomy indeed. He said the breakdown of the process had left egg on the faces of all parties involved.

We also spoke to Mitchel McLaughlin, chairman of Sinn Fein. He said the situation could still be salvaged if Mr Blair made a statement assuring sceptics that the IRA was in full compliance with the decommissioning scheme.

But Mr Trimble has urged the IRA to drop altogether the curbs on information about weapons decommissioning - which prevented Arms chief General John de Chastelain being more specific about which arms had been put out of use.

"Recovery would be very simple - let the prime minister put the information he has in the public domain," he said.

"Let the republicans remove from De Chastelain the limitations that have prevented him from giving a full report - let him do so."