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Northern Ireland's rival factions traveled Wednesday to Scotland, where the British and Irish governments were hoping a change of scenery and a day-and-night diplomatic effort might inspire a breakthrough on power-sharing, an elusive dream of peacemaking.

Both governments have spent the past three years pressing the Democratic Unionists, the province's major British Protestant party, to forge a coalition with Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army-linked party that represents most of the Irish Catholic minority. Such power-sharing was the central aim of the Good Friday peace accord of 1998, but a four-party administration established in the wake of that landmark pact collapsed in 2002 amid chronic conflicts between Protestants and Sinn Fein.

The prime ministers of Britain and Ireland, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, arrived Wednesday afternoon to begin a three-day effort to reduce the gulf of mistrust and disputes that separates Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists and Gerry Adams' Sinn Fein.

The premiers, who have jointly led several similar efforts since 2003, insist this will be the last time they attempt to broker a deal a threat backed by the reality that both Blair and Ahern could be out of office within months. Blair has already said he is stepping down by mid-2007, while the Republic of Ireland faces a general election around the same time.

To focus minds now, they insist that the Northern Ireland Assembly which wields the power to elect, or block, an administration will be shut down if the Democratic Unionists do not agree to work with Sinn Fein by a November 24 deadline. Those two parties would receive most cabinet posts because they hold most Assembly seats, while moderate Protestant and Catholic parties who led the previous failed coalition would also participate.

"I think people in Northern Ireland are saying, 'Look, it's time to decide one way or the other,"' Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Hain said in an interview with Sky News Wednesday morning. "So we need a 100 percent deal by November 24, not a 95 percent deal which could unravel later.... or Stormont (the assembly) is shut down. I hope that the politicians will be up for a deal."

Sinn Fein traveled to St. Andrews accentuating the positive, arguing that the IRA's dramatic peace moves over the past year had removed any credible Democratic Unionist excuse not to co-operate.

"Is Ian Paisley up for doing a deal this week? I don't know," Adams told supporters on Tuesday night at a Belfast hotel that the IRA repeatedly bombed in the 1970s and 1980s. "But I do know that the question is no longer about whether the DUP (Democratic Unionist Party) will do a deal. The question is about when the DUP will do a deal."

The last coalition collapsed, in part, because the IRA refused to disarm by mid-2000 as the Good Friday pact expected. Protestant voters turned to the uncompromising Democratic Unionists, who insisted they would not do business with Sinn Fein unless the IRA disappeared first.

The past year has witnessed dramatic progress on that front. The IRA, which killed 1,775 people from 1970 to a 1997 cease-fire, in July 2005 declared a formal end to its campaign to overthrow Northern Ireland by force.

Two months later it handed over its secretly stockpiled weapons to disarmament officials and began a gradual program of demobilizing and reorienting the underground organization.

International experts appointed by Britain and Ireland reported last week that the IRA had disbanded its key units for promoting its military capabilities: its departments for making and smuggling weapons, and recruiting and training members.

(China Daily October 12, 2006)