Blair 'sought meetings' with IRA

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair was so determined to secure a Northern Ireland peace deal that he sought secret meetings with IRA leaders, his former chief of staff has said.

Jonathan Powell said Mr Blair was convinced he could use talks to persuade the IRA's Army Council to give up their weapons.

"Tony was always convinced of the powers of persuasion that he had to win people over," Mr Powell told t he Guardian , which is serialising his book about the peace process.

"About three or four times he suggested to Gerry Adams that he should meet the IRA Army Council. Adams said 'well I'm not really sure about that'. One time he said 'yes, maybe', but then it came to nothing."

Mr Powell, who was one of Mr Blair's key advisers throughout his 10 years in Downing Street, was a key player in securing the Belfast Agreement. He defended the decision to concentrate on dealings with Sin Féin and to offer concessions.

"We certainly believed there was every chance that the IRA might go back to violence, just as they had with the Canary Wharf bomb [in 1996]," he said.

The revelation of the proposed meetings with the IRA came as Mr Powell said the peace process experience suggested the Government should also talk to al Qaeda.

"With any of these sort of groups, you need to have some sort of channel of communication which to start with will not be particularly useful but in the end gives you the way of making peace," he told BBC1's Andrew Marr Show .

"Unless you believe that there is a purely military solution you can find to any of these disputes, at some stage you are going to have to talk to the people you are fighting."

"Negotiating with the IRA in the 70s, 80s and 90s did not mean we stopped the military campaign; it did not mean that we agreed to a united Ireland.

"It doesn't mean in the case of al Qaida that you would agree to an Islamic caliphate in Spain and Portugal. It means that you can actually have a discussion with them and when they come to have serious views you can get them away from climbing off the peg they are caught on."