UK Edition
Powersharing talks in Northern Ireland could continue into next week
Powersharing talks in Northern Ireland could continue into next week after Gerry Adams suggested the deadline for reaching an agreement will not be met on Monday.
The Sinn Fein president said the door was still open but there had been no sense of urgency to restore multi-party devolved government in Stormont.
Government sources last night reiterated the desire in Westminster to avoid direct rule at all costs, leading to claims that the major parties are likely to be given an extension to continue talks if they fail to reach an agreement by lunchtime today.
James Brokenshire, the Northern Ireland Secretary, will give a statement in the House of Commons this afternoon setting out the options following a weekend of continued discussion after the parties failed to agree by last Friday.
He could offer an extended timetable or impose direct rule but the implications of the latter, at a time when Theresa May has entered a power-sharing agreement with the Democratic Unionist Party, would be grave critics have warned.
Yesterday Mr Adams said: "I don't believe that there is going to be a deal by Monday.
"The DUP are showing no urgency or no real inclination to deal with the rights-based issues which are at the crux and the heart of these difficulties which we are talking here about."
He said those included republican demands for an Irish Language Act, a Bill of Rights, marriage equality and dealing with the legacy of decades of past violence.
"Unless they step-change I just cannot see, here we are on Saturday afternoon, I just cannot see how, and we told them this directly, how a deal can be put together by then", he said.
The Northern Ireland Assembly was suspended in March after the unionist parties lost their majority in Stormont and the two sides failed to agree on a new power-sharing deal.
Britain and Ireland act as co-guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement, the treaty that restored power to Stormont and ended the decades-long Troubles in the province.