Leaders gather to boost N.I. peace

Ahern says he intends to bring up the subject of a controversial nuclear plant with Blair

DUBLIN, Republic of Ireland -- The Irish and UK prime ministers and delegates from around Britain gathered on Friday for a meeting intended to show peace in Northern Ireland is taking hold.

About 40 political representatives from around the British Isles met in Dublin for only the second time in two years as the British-Irish Council.

It is one of the structures -- with the all-Ireland North-South Ministerial Council -- set up after the 1998 Good Friday power-sharing agreement aimed at ending three decades of violence.

Among subjects being discussed were combating drug trafficking, Irish fears of radiation from British nuclear plants, and efforts to forge an all-Ireland plan for dealing with emergencies.

"It shows that the institutions are working," Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern said as he greeted arriving delegates, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

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The role of the British-Irish Council is to boost cultural and social ties throughout the British Isles and Ireland while the North-South Ministerial Council bolsters cross-border co-operation in Ireland.

Observers say holding meetings of both councils on the same day was clearly intended to kick start a process of institution building put in deep freeze for almost two years.

The first British-Irish Council meeting was held in London in December 1999. Every attempt to convene since was put back -- once due to the death of Scotland's first minister but later due to the near-collapse of the Northern Irish peace process.

The Ministerial Council has met more often, but its meetings were hugely divisive because Northern Ireland's pro-British unionist First Minister David Trimble barred members of the pro-republican Sinn Fein from attending cross-border functions.

The injunction was lifted when the Irish Republican Army started to disarm last month and Trimble fought his way back to office, despite protests by a deeply divided Protestant unionist camp.

Ahern said that during a planned bilateral meeting with Blair he intended to bring up the issue of Britain's nuclear fuel plant at Sellafield, which lies directly across the Irish Sea from the coast of Ireland.

He said Ireland faced several environmental challenges but Sellafield was "the most important."

A decision by the British government last month to approve the expansion of the Sellafield plant caused uproar in Ireland, which has since launched a legal bid at the Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in Hamburg to prevent it going ahead.