BELFAST, 4 October 2003 — Northern Ireland’s main Protestant leader told Irish Republican Army guerrillas yesterday they must renounce violence and resume disarming within a week or the latest bid to salvage self-rule in the province would fail.

Behind-the-scenes talks between Ulster Unionist Party leader David Trimble and Catholic rival Gerry Adams, head of the IRA’s political ally Sinn Fein, have been going on for weeks in an effort to strike a deal allowing delayed elections to be held.

“The time available is limited, there is only a week or so left for progress to be achieved,” Trimble told a news conference at his pro-British party’s east Belfast headquarters.

“Let’s hope that at some point we actually see the progress that is needed in terms of dealing with continuing paramilitary activity with acts of completion that allow the assembly to be resumed.”

Northern Ireland’s power sharing assembly — the center piece of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement which aimed to end three decades of violence — has been suspended for a year.

British ministers took direct control of the province after Trimble threatened to bring down the Protestant/Catholic coalition in Belfast in response to accusations the IRA had used Sinn Fein’s foothold in government as cover for a spy operation.

In May, British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who will meet his Irish counterpart Bertie Ahern in Rome today to review progress on the fringes of a European Union summit, cancelled assembly elections.

With unionists refusing to go back to government with Sinn Fein until the IRA declares its war against British rule over for good, Blair argued there was no chance of elections leading to the formation of a new power sharing government.

Adams says there will be no movement from the IRA — on ceasefire since 1997 —until Britain sets a date for new elections, and wants assurances from Trimble unionists will never again threaten to bring down the home rule institutions in Northern Ireland.

If elections are to be held before Christmas they must be called by mid-October, but Britain is reluctant to set a polling date before a deal to return to government has been struck.

On Thursday, a British source told Reuters there were only around 10 days left to broker agreement.

“I think if there is movement it will be in the next week or so after the weekend, I wouldn’t expect much before the two prime minister’s have met,” the British source said.