THE SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, has said the "surreal" nature of the decommissioning debate "does not lessen its capacity to wreck" the talks process.
In his recent verbal submission to the Stormont plenary, Mr Hume warned: "It will quite inevitably do so if significant parties use it as a tactical lever, to set other parties exams they know very well they cannot pass, because they deal manifestly with things quite literally beyond their power."
In an earlier statement, the party's deputy leader, Mr Seamus Mallon, proposed to "inject some tests of reality into a debate where this quality has been in very short supply".
Mr Mallon said: "Firstly, no one has convincingly argued that decommissioning is a decisive security measure, however desirable it might be. Indeed security personnel are clear - mostly in private, some in public - that this is essentially a political issue.
"Secondly, it is a voluntary exercise, which logically and necessarily requires the co operation of those holding the weapons. The governments and their vast security apparatus have been pursuing a decommissioning policy for years, seeking out and confiscating illegal weapons wherever they can be found.
"They will of course continue this, and very rightly so. Unionists should not confuse their public by conflating two entirely different exercises."
Mr Mallon said: "They want to treat decommissioning as a matter that can be peremptorily imposed on the paramilitaries... That is in itself a perfectly valid approach but it is for the security forces, not for a political process."
Thirdly, Mr Mallon insisted: "Decommissioning in the sense of the Mitchell Report will never happen unless as a by product of political progress. The Mitchell Report is absolutely clear that political progress and confidence must come first. That is in any case a matter of common sense to anyone who considers the context in which the paramilitaries on both sides operate.
"Any decommissioning will have to be on a mutual basis as between both sets of paramilitaries, as the Mitchell Report itself makes clear. Therefore decommissioning can only come from a fully inclusive negotiating process.
"Those who say they want decommissioning must demonstrate their sincerity by working actively for an inclusive process. Those who oppose an inclusive process should stop pretending to want decommissioning," he said.
"The unionist leadership now is demanding from a process which does not include Sinn Fein an outcome which can only be achieved, if at all, from a process which includes Sinn Fein and the loyalist parties. Either they are deliberately setting an impossible test for the present process, or else they have no faith whatever that the present format can last, or deliver a result," Mr Mallon added.
Mr Hume, in his submission at the end of last month, repeated the series of "litmus tests" earlier indicated by Mr Mallon in respect of the commitment of the other parties to the process. These were:
. Do they accept that the way forward is to implement all aspects of the Mitchell Report, or is theirs an a la carte approach to salvage the unreal preconditions which Mitchell sought to overcome?
. Will they explain to their own public the difference between imposed decommissioning, which is for security forces, and the Mitchell goal of voluntary disarmament, which would flow from political progress and negotiations?
. Do they accept that such decommissioning requires an inclusive process, and if so, what are they doing to advance this necessary condition for their goal of decommissioning?
. What are they doing to advance the other Mitchell criterion that a meaningful and inclusive process of negotiations is genuinely being offered?
. Will they accept that all conceivable interpretations of the Mitchell Report involve a process of negotiations on this issue, and are they willing to engage in good faith on this, in parallel with the political negotiations?