Britain and the IRA were under intense pressure to reveal details of the armed group's latest act of disarmament on Wednesday after a much trumpeted attempt to bring final peace to Northern Ireland ended in fiasco.

The province's main Protestant leader David Trimble was in London for talks with ministers, a day after rejecting the Irish Republican Army's biggest ever weapons move as too secretive.

Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart Bertie Ahern (L) gesture as they address a joint news conference at Hillsborough Castle near Belfast, Oct. 21, 2003. [Reuters]

"Recovery would be very simple -- let the (British) prime minister (Tony Blair) put the information he has in the public domain," Trimble told the BBC.

"Let the republicans remove from (arms monitor General John) de Chastelain the limitations that have prevented him from giving a full report -- let him do so."

Trimble held a brief meeting with Gerry Adams, head of the IRA's political ally Sinn Fein, late on Tuesday night, and further talks were planned in the coming days.

"We were left standing at the altar," Adams told a news conference at his party headquarters in staunchly Catholic west Belfast on Wednesday. "Republicans did deliver as agreed."

He said Trimble's move had left the peace process facing "profound difficulties" which need to be solved in the next few days.

Blair and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern, who went to Belfast on Tuesday expecting to seal the most significant advance since the 1998 Good Friday peace deal, found themselves embarrassed and disappointed as the deal collapsed.

Back in London on Wednesday, Blair said that if details of the IRA's latest destruction of weapons were allowed to become public, all sides in the province would be convinced of the importance of the guerrilla group's action.

Even the United States sounded a mildly disgruntled note.

Irish Republican Army (IRA) guerrillas promised on Oct. 21, 2003 to scrap arms as the peace process in Northern Ireland lurched toward the restoration of a power-sharing government in the province. But the Catholic guerrilla group failed to make clear whether it planned to comply with demands that it scrap all its weapons for good. An IRA member poses with a shoulder launched weapon in this undated file photo.  [Reuters]

"Our view is that the issue of decommissioning weapons... needs to be worked out between the independent international commission on decommissioning and the IRA," State Department spokesman Adam Ereli told reporters in Washington.

"Having said that, the more transparent the act of decommissioning is, the more confidence it will generate."

De Chastelain, the retired Canadian general charged with overseeing guerrilla disarmament, confirmed on Tuesday that the IRA had destroyed automatic rifles, explosives and other weapons but under the terms of his role, is not allowed to go further.

"I agree it is an unsatisfactory situation and it's what we are trying to resolve at the moment," Blair told parliament.

"We are not at liberty without his (de Chastelain's) permission to disclose that information but we are working hard to try and find a way that we can disclose it."

VIDEO, INVENTORY

Britain had set in train a carefully orchestrated sequence of events by declaring elections to Northern Ireland's powersharing assembly would be held on November 26. Then came statements from the IRA and General de Chastelain.

But although the general said the move involved more weapons than two previous acts of IRA disarmament, he gave no details in his report and the choreography broke when Trimble said it was too vague and he could go no further with the deal.

The hardline Democratic Unionist Party, which presents Trimble's mainstream Ulster Unionists with a stiff challenge in the battle for Protestant votes, said the deal was a "shambles."

"The IRA continues to hold the political process to ransom," deputy leader Peter Robinson told a news conference in mainly Protestant east Belfast.

"We should not be sidetracked into some debate about visibility of decommissioning when the real issue is the continued IRA strategy of extracting concessions."

Analysts say Trimble calculates he needs a more dramatic gesture from the IRA to persuade increasingly skeptical Protestants to continue backing the Good Friday deal, which many believe has mostly benefited the minority Catholic community.

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