BELFAST, Northern Ireland (AP) -- American mediator George Mitchell said Monday he was increasingly confident that the stalemate blocking Northern Ireland's peace accord would soon be broken.
Mitchell, who has spent 11 weeks trying to get a long-delayed Protestant-Catholic government formed, said that all sides agreed the government should be formed "at the earliest possible date" and that the Irish Republican Army should start disarming "as quickly as possible."The Ulster Unionists, Northern Ireland's major Protestant party, and Sinn Fein, the IRA-linked party that represents the most militant section of Catholic opinion, were both guarded in welcoming Mitchell's statement.
Media reports over the weekend said the outlawed IRA would be expected to begin handing over weapons to a disarmament commission in January as part of a confidential package Mitchell proposed last week.
But senior Ulster Unionists, while divided over the proposal's merit, were unanimous in saying they had received no such commitment from the IRA.
Sinn Fein chairman Mitchel McLaughlin also wouldn't say whether the IRA had given disarmament assurances.
The Ulster Unionists have refused for a year to establish the four-party administration of Protestants and Catholics envisioned in the Good Friday accord.
Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble, who would lead the government, said the IRA had to promise to disarm before his party deputies would help elect Sinn Fein figures to two of the proposed administration's 12 posts.
Negotiators on both sides, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Mitchell's proposal to break the deadlock involved a sequence of steps, starting with the Ulster Unionists accepting Sinn Fein's two nominees to the administration.
Sinn Fein then would pledge its support for nonviolence, negotiators said, and the IRA would nominate a representative to Belfast's disarmament commission, which is led by Canadian Gen. John de Chastelain. The general in turn would announce that the IRA representative was acting in good faith.
The British government, which has overseen Northern Ireland since 1972, would begin devolving power to the new Belfast government in December.
Negotiators were still arguing, though, about whether Sinn Fein should be expelled from the new government if the IRA didn't act in January.
The Ulster Unionists wanted such a clause guaranteed by the British government, which instead proposed the entire government be suspended.