Secret trysts to cosy chats: how No 10 embraced republicans

Northern Ireland, once famous as the place where most politicians refused to talk to one another, has become almost a model for dialogue and discussion where nearly everybody talks to nearly everybody else.

Tony Blair speaks to Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams all the time on the phone, sometimes twice a day, while the Ulster Unionist leader, David Trimble, regularly meets Mr Adams, the Irish Taoiseach, Bertie Ahern, and other nationalist figures.

This does not mean everybody trusts everybody else, and does not always avoid blockages such as the present stalemate in the peace process. But it has led to new relationships, most importantly between Mr Blair and republican negotiators Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.

Even as Mr Blair yesterday sought to turn up the heat on the republicans to produce clarity, he twice made a point of commending the commitment to peace of the two men. Mr Adams has reciprocated in the past by commending the Prime Minister's "singular and exceptional contribution".

All this is based on dozens of meetings and probably hundreds of phone calls. Most of the meetings are publicised but many are not, and it seems the most important encounters are those involving only Mr Blair himself and his chief- of-staff, Jonathan Powell.

Martin McGuinness has spoken of chatting with the Prime Minister in the garden of Chequers: "The scenery around it is absolutely beautiful, it just stretches for miles and miles and miles, and so it was a very relaxed atmosphere."

He has also described how they have met discreetly in Hillsborough Castle: "We would come in the back door of Hillsborough – we were away from the glare of publicity in a very small sitting room."

In public and at larger gatherings, the stance of Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness is that they speak strictly for Sinn Fein and have nothing whatever to do with the IRA. The general assumption, however, is that when it is only Mr Blair and Mr Powell the conversation is much more open.

A similar situation holds with the Irish government, where franker talk is said to go on involving two men, Mr Ahern and a senior official in the Irish Justice Department.

The present impasse dates back to the moment earlier this month when Mr Powell flew to Northern Ireland. He and the Dublin official were then handed an IRA statement that London and Dublin have subsequently said lacks clarity.

The division of labour seems to be that while the Northern Ireland Office handles the details of political negotiations, Mr Blair and Mr Powell handle the bigger picture.

Since becoming prime minister, Mr Blair has taken the view that discussions should happen on a routine basis.

The negotiations leading up to this point have closely involved the Ulster Unionist Party, with a series of contacts between David Trimble and Mr Adams. This relationship remains more problematical: Mr Trimble has, for example, never publicly shaken hands with the Sinn Fein leader.

Mr Trimble and his party never spoke directly to Sinn Fein during the intricate negotiations leading up to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, so that the accord was put together via the two governments. Mr Adams wryly recalled those days: "My best discussions with the Unionists were in the men's room, where they were a captive audience and it was possible to engage in some conversation, sometimes one-sided."

Dermot Nesbitt, a former Ulster Unionist minister in the Northern Ireland Assembly, confirmed this: "I was standing in the toilet relieving myself when suddenly I felt a hand on my shoulder, and realised it was Gerry Adams who was enquiring about my well-being. Lost for words and for want of something better to say I said, 'I didn't realise you were so big'."