Britain and Ireland scrambled on Tuesday to defuse a political crisis in Northern Ireland triggered by a sex and cash scandal, saying it may even be an opportunity to unblock stalled talks.
Northern Ireland minister Shaun Woodward was to discuss the crisis with Irish counterpart Micheal Martin, a day after the province's leader Peter Robinson stood down over a scandal linked to his wife's affair with a teenager.
Robinson's decision to stand aside for six weeks has prompted concerns the once-troubled province's already strained power-sharing administration could collapse altogether.
But Woodward said he was optimistic that the crisis could help make progress on stalled talks on transferring policing and justice powers from London to Belfast.
"There has been an extraordinary turn of events in the last week in Northern Ireland... That being said, out of all this there is a very real opportunity to make very substantial progress," he told the BBC.
"My sense is... that there are many politicians, particularly over the last 24 hours, who have actually faced over the precipice, seen the consequences of not fully engaging and are now really engaging with the issues."
His Irish counterpart echoed the views, saying Robinson's decision to stand down temporarily gave a framework to "facilitate an early agreement" on the transfer of policing and justice powers from London to Belfast.
"A mechanism has been developed which does allow for negotiations to take place on a realistic basis which can produce a positive and successful result," Martin told RTE state radio.
Robinson is now facing questions over whether he can come back after his wife Iris, also a senior politician, admitted securing 50,000 pounds from two wealthy developers to help her former lover set up a cafe.
Robinson insists he was not aware of her financial dealings and attacked as "unfounded and mischievous" Monday an allegation by the BBC that he did. If this were the case, he should have reported it to officials.
Iris Robinson is currently receiving "acute psychiatric treatment" in Belfast, according to her husband, and is expected to quit her seats in the Northern Ireland Assembly and the House of Commons imminently.
She previously admitted attempting suicide and suffering severe depression.
Arlene Foster, the 39-year-old enterprise minister filling in for Robinson, insisted he had only stepped aside temporarily.
"Peter hasn't left the scene, he is still the leader of the party, very clearly, and he is still the First Minister," she said.
Even before the scandal, Northern Ireland was tense over the failure of Robinson's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and power-sharing partners Sinn Fein to reach agreement on when policing powers should be handed from London to Belfast, the final, highly sensitive stage of devolution.
But commentators fear the revelations over the Robinsons could deal a fatal blow to the administration.
"Peter Robinson is in the throes of a battle for his political life," The Independent newspaper in London said in an editorial Tuesday. "Any fresh revelations could be fatal."
Robinson's conservative DUP, which is Protestant and wants Northern Ireland to remain part of Britain, has since 2007 shared devolved powers from London in an administration with socialists Sinn Fein, which is Catholic and wants the province to join the Republic of Ireland.
There are fears of a return to more frequent violence in the province where three decades of civil unrest killed at least 3,500 people. The fighting was largely ended by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, brokered by the British and Irish governments.
Last year, two soldiers and a policeman were shot dead in attacks claimed by dissident republicans.
In the latest incident Friday, a Catholic police officer was seriously injured after a bomb exploded under his car as he drove to work.
Copyright 2010 AFP European Edition
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