The British and Irish governments have given Northern Ireland's two power-sharing parties a 48-hour deadline to agree a way forward on a dispute over policing and justice, after three days of talks failed to hammer out an accord.

British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his Irish counterpart Brian Cowen insisted after the talks broke up today that "progress" had been made and there was scope for an agreement.

The row over devolution of policing and justice powers is critical to the future of the province's power-sharing governments of Republican Sinn Fein - which favours a united Ireland - and the pro-British Democratic Unionist Party (DUP).

Prime Minister Brown warned that if the DUP and Sinn Fein fail to clinch a deal before Friday, London and Dublin would publish their own proposals to move the process forward.

Transferring responsibility for policing and justice from London to Belfast is one of the final steps to full devolution envisaged in the 1998 accords that ended Northern Ireland's three-decade long sectarian conflict.

British PM Gordon Brown leaves talks on NI. (Photo EPA)