Blair urges Trimble and Adams to talk together

Tony Blair last night urged David Trimble, the Ulster Unionists' leader, to engage in direct negotiations with Gerry Adams, Sinn Fein President. Colin Brown, Chief Political Correspondent, reports on the Prime Minister's call for compromise.

With the peace talks on a knife-edge in London, he urged the parties to "engage" in the peace process, in a clear appeal to the Mr Trimble to enter into face-to-face negotiations with Mr Adams.

"I hope very much that people do engage with each other during the course of this talks process," Mr Blair said as he arrived at a reception at the talks. "That is the only way we are going to be able to discuss properly the details of a settlement."

His intervention was seen as an attempt to force the pace of the talks, which had been stalled as the British and Irish governments wrangled before producing a new document on the controversial north-south cross-border body, and an "east-west" council of the islands.

Although they have been sitting in the same room at Lancaster House, the parties say that Unionists have refused to negotiate directly with Mr Adams. "Sometimes they forget themselves and do so, but the rest of the time it is in the third person."

The Unionists yesterday tore up a copy of the Anglo-Irish "framework document" which relaunched the talks process to show they were not prepared to accept a cross-border body with executive powers.

The Prime Minister's speech, at a reception which included Mr Adams, was also directed at the IRA, who last week rejected the two governments' "propositions" document for accepting separation by insisting on change only by consent.

"Compromises will have to be made," Mr Blair said. "Fear and distrust of others will have to be set aside."

Mo Mowlam, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, admitted that the two governments had been engaged in negotiations as "proxies for the parties", which she called "daft".

She had earlier reluctantly agreed to a renewed commitment to the framework document being included in the "strand two" paper after fears that it would upset the Unionists, who are opposed to a cross-border body with executive powers.

Those fears were realised after the nationalist SDLP led by John Hume said the paper had endorsed the executive powers for the body in the framework document. The Ulster Unionist leader held a press conference to repudiate that claim.

The London stage of the talks will end today.