MR TONY BLAIR returns to London tomorrow to face mounting unionist pressure to withdraw his offer to admit Sinn Fein to the Stormont talks process some six weeks after a new IRA ceasefire. The offer was contained in the aide memoir given to Sinn Fein on Friday, June 13th, just three days before the IRA murders of two RUC officers in Lurgan.
British sources last night said the question of whether Mr Blair's offer still held in the light of the killings had yet to be determined.
That issue is set to dominate discussions between Mr Blair and Mr David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist Party leader, after the British Prime Minister's return from New York and ahead of his expected Commons statement on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, doubt about the nature of Mr Blair's offer to Sinn Fein grew last night, as senior unionist MPs supported Sinn Fein claims that decommissioning had not been resolved.
In its paper, the British government expressed its desire to resolve the issue swiftly, and to the satisfaction of all the parties. to enable "substantive" political negotiations to start in September.
However, unionist sources confirmed last Tuesday's report in The Irish Times that Mr Trimble had rejected Dr Mo Mowlam's proposals for dealing with decommissioning, as Sinn Fein sources suggested "the how" of the British government's aspiration had not been spelt out.
Speaking in Bodenstown yesterday, Mr Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein's chief negotiator, said the party was taking a positive approach to decommissioning. "Decommissioning has not yet been removed as an obstacle in the negotiations. This remains the biggest stumbling block to forward movement.
"Decommissioning is an important issue to be addressed as part of a negotiating process. But it needs to be removed as an obstacle so that it can no longer be employed to block ,n,negotiations, now or in the future.
The Northern Ireland Secretary is expected to produce a redraft of her proposals on decommissioning before a scheduled plenary session of the Stormont talks tomorrow. But decommissioning could be eclipsed by angry unionist and Conservative demands that Mr Blair withdraw his proposed timetable for Sinn Fein's entry to talks after any new ceasefire.
Mr Ken Maginnis MP last night said the British plan was unacceptable, not just because of the Lurgan killings, but as a result of "the cumulative effect" of IRA actions since the collapse of the 1994 ceasefire.
Mr Maginnis said: "Nobody would have believed there could be any objective assessment [of a ceasefire] made in such a short period of time."