UK, Ireland start final push for N.Irish deal

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland, Oct 13 (Reuters) Britain and Ireland began a final push today to convince rival Northern Irish politicians to agree on how to revive a power-sharing assembly to govern the province.

Rival pro-British and pro-Irish parties -- deadlocked over who should compromise first to get the local government back up and running -- negotiated with the governments of Britain and Ireland against the clock.

London and Dublin plan to call time on the talks about midday today if the parties fail to agree. The governments will then publish their own proposals, mapping out a sequence of steps to restore the assembly at Stormont in Belfast.

''We're starting the bilaterals again and we just have to see where we are,'' Prime Minister Tony Blair's spokesman told Reuters from the talks at a hotel on Scotland's east coast. ''We have to find out where the parties have got to overnight.'' The governments say the parties would have to agree on the proposals by a November 24 deadline. If they fail to do so, London will shut the assembly, stop members' salaries and continue running the province from Westminster, with input from Dublin.

(DEADLOCK) Negotiators from the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and the pro-Irish Sinn Fein are standing their ground over two issues: the DUP's refusal to share power with Sinn Fein and Sinn Fein's reluctance to fully endorse a local police force.

As the province's two biggest parties, their buy-in is crucial.

Northern Ireland's assembly was set up under the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that largely ended 30 years of violence between majority Protestants committed to ties with Britain and a Roman Catholic minority in favour of a united Ireland.

However, a failure by Irish Republican Army guerrillas to disarm, the deep-seated mistrust that is the legacy of decades of conflict, and the rise in power of hardline parties on both sides mean the assembly never really got off the ground.

It was suspended in 2002 amid a row over spying by the IRA, who waged a bloody campaign against British rule during which some 3,600 people were killed.

Repeated attempts since then to revive the assembly have failed, but the UK and Ireland were optimistic a pledge by the IRA last year to end violence, to which the province's ceasefire watchdog says it is adhering, would provide the spur to a deal.

But fresh hurdles remain.

DUP leader Ian Paisley is adamant Sinn Fein -- the political ally of the IRA -- must pledge full support to the province's police force before he agrees to sit in government with it.

Sinn Fein says it will not move on the policing issue until Paisley commits to sharing power.

Negotiations in the Northern Ireland peace process often run on beyond planned deadlines but today's talks are expected to finish by midday, in part because the infamously intransigent Paisley, 80, celebrates his 50th wedding anniversary today and wants to get home for the party.

REUTERS SP BS1522