LOYALIST political representatives have warned that unionist attempts to turn the decommissioning issue into an insurmountable barrier could bring about the collapse of the Stormont talks within days".
On the eve of the Anglo-Irish Conference meeting in Belfast tonight, which will focus on the decommissioning impasse, UDP and PUP spokesmen criticised the tactics of the main unionist parties.
Mr David Adams of the UDP said there now appeared to be an unbridgeable gulf between the adopted positions of the talks participants on decommissioning. Unless there was substantial movement on the issue, the multiparty negotiations would in all likelihood collapse.
"Decommissioning, is quite rightly a matter of serious concern to the people of Northern Ireland but is being deliberately manipulated by some participants merely to create a circumstance whereby loyalist parties will be excluded from playing any further part in negotiations," he said in a statement.
"It is impossible to equate the much-publicised `concern' of some participants regarding the removal of all illegal weapons from our society, with attempts by those same parties to use this issue to, on the one hand, create an insurmountable barrier to entry, and, on the other, create an exclusion mechanism which impacts directly on those parties who may have influence on eventually bringing about actual decommissioning.
"Those who are seriously concerned with removing all illegal weaponry from our society recognise that decommissioning can only be dealt with within the process of negotiations."
Mr David Ervine of the PUP agreed they now had only "a matter of working days" to get past decommissioning or the talks would collapse. He believed other unionist parties were "working feverishly" to ensure that Sinn Fein could not enter the talks. They failed to recognise that the rock Sinn Fein would perish on was the principle of consent, rather than decommissioning.
It was Sinn Fein's responsibility now, and the IRA's responsibility, to create a credible ceasefire which would allow the unionist family to begin the talks process with them included.
He added that "a ceasefire that can be believed as permanent, a ceasefire that perhaps adopted the loyalist policy of no first strike" would essentially be a move in the right direction.
PUP and UDP leaders are expected to emphasise these points in a meeting with the British prime minister, Mr John Major, at Downing Street today. The UUP leader, Mr David Trimble, is to have a meeting with Mr Major tomorrow.