Ireland's foreign minister is forced to resign

He should have been soaking up the plaudits at Stormont as the talks took another step forward yesterday. But instead, as David McKittrick, and Alan Murdoch report, Ray Burke, the Irish foreign minister and co- sponsor of the talks, was forced to resign.

First out of the talks building to speak to the media yesterday was Paul Murphy, the minister for political development, who reported that things were "very businesslike, very workmanlike".

Inside, the participants were launching the three strands of the negotiations. Strand one deals with internal administration, strand two concerns Northern Ireland's relationship with the Republic of Ireland; strand three encompasses overall Anglo-Irish relations.

Outside the talks, Ray Burke, who as Irish minister for foreign affairs had led the Dublin team at Stormont, resigned following scandals over sleaze.

Mr Burke, who has also quit the Dail after 24 years, had been under siege for weeks after admitting taking pounds 30,000 in cash in 1989 when a business associate was seeking extensive planning permissions in his north Dublin base. Despite claiming he was the victim of a witch-hunt, his denial last month that any favour was offered for the cash did not convince voters. Only 21 per cent in polls said they believed him; 56 per cent urged him to step down.

Bertie Ahern, the Taioseach, will retain the foreign brief until a successor is chosen and at Stormont yesterday Mr Burke's place was taken by the justice minister, John O'Donoghue and Liz O'Donnell, the junior foreign minister.

Emerging from the building Mr Murphy said: " It was a good start." It was obviously early days, he added, but there was no doubt progress had been made; there had been no unpleasant exchanges and it was "in no way governed by rancour."

There was a slightly different prospective from Monica McWilliams, leader of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition.

"It was a testy enough meeting and there was quite a bit of tension in the room," she said. "There were no comments exchanged, but there were background noises when people were delivering their speeches and as you can imagine there was quite a bit of disagreement."

The background noises, another delegate privately revealed, had consisted of "grunts, groans and loud conversation" from the direction of the Ulster Unionist delegation during contributions from Sinn Fein's Martin McGuinness and others.

The chief grunter and groaner was Unionist MP Ken Maginnis, who himself later said dismissively of the Republicans: "They appeared to be out of their depth today. There was nothing new - it was a series of cliches and platitudes."

A Loyalist delegate summed up his sense that there had been a certain amount of sparring without any actual damage being inflicted: "Ach it's all right - it's handbags at 40 paces."