1 The British and Irish governments said they achieved a breakthrough Tuesday on efforts to reach a shared vision of a Northern Ireland political settlement.
2 After 5 1/2 hours of negotiations at Stormont Castle east of Belfast, Britain's senior official in Northern Ireland, Sir Patrick Mayhew, and Irish Foreign Minister Dick Spring said they had largely resolved the issues that had slowed down a key part of peacemaking efforts.
3 They declined to discuss specifics of their new areas of agreement before publication of the finished product -- the long-awaited 'framework document' outlining the British-ruled province's future.
4 All factions in Northern Ireland, divided broadly into pro-British Protestant and Irish Catholic camps, are waiting to see which side the document will favor.
5 Spring suggested that may happen next week, 'if everything goes extraordinarily well.' He said he and Mayhew would most likely meet again later this week for 'dotting the i's and crossing the t's,' then present the document to their governments for approval.
6 Mayhew was more cautious, saying at a separate press conference: 'Some important obstacles have been overcome. The outcome has been very encouraging and good, but we are not there yet because there are important matters of presentation and drafting that have to be done.'
7 Tuesday's session was the first formal meeting between the two governments since September, the month the Irish Republican Army began observing an open-ended truce.
8 That cease-fire has largely held and -- jointly with a truce by pro-British 'loyalist' groups called in mid-October -- has given Northern Ireland its first extended period of calm since 1969, when British troops were deployed in response to Protestant-Catholic street violence.
9 But efforts to agree on the so-called 'framework document,' spelling out how Britain and the Irish Republic view the likely terms of compromise, had run into trouble.
10 Protestant politicians, determined to maintain Northern Ireland's union with Britain, fear that the British-Irish document will endorse the notion of a cross-border authority of politicians and bureaucrats.
11 As envisioned, the body would set policy on tourism, transport and relations with the 15-nation European Union on behalf of separate parliaments in Dublin and Belfast, treating the independent south and British-ruled north as one unit.
12 British Prime Minister John Major, dependent on Protestant support in Parliament, has repeatedly sought to reassure them this won't happen without their support.
13 Hours before Mayhew and Spring sat down together in Northern Ireland, Major in London went through the rare step of visiting leading members of the Ulster Unionist Party, the main pro-British bloc. After nearly two hours of discussions a leading Ulster Unionist, David Trimble, said Major hadn't reassured them -- 'not in the slightest.'
14 Northern Ireland's moderate Catholics and the Irish government insist that a cross-border body must form part of any package, to balance out a key symbolic concession from their side: the ending or amending of the south's territorial claim to Northern Ireland.

They declined to discuss specifics of their new areas of agreement before publication of the finished product - - the long - awaited " framework document " outlining the British - ruled province ' s future .
declined
Is there any chance the finished product won't be released on time or as planned?