THE adoption of a major all party report on resolving the Northern Ireland conflict at tomorrow's session of the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation in Dublin Castle is now considered unlikely.
Senior political sources said that Sinn Fein was having difficulties with sections of the report dealing with the consent of unionists to a settlement.
A special committee of the Forum has been preparing the report, entitled Paths to a Political Settlement: Realities. Principles and Requirements, since last summer. Sources said there had been about 30 drafts of the document - the most important to come out of the Forum - which was scheduled to be formally adopted this week.
Sinn Fein declined to comment last night, but it is understood that the party's ardchomhairle (executive) discussed the report on Monday and that a further discussion took place yesterday.
The 5,000 word confidential draft report was also discussed at some length by the Fianna Fail front bench on Tuesday. The party was anxious that the document should be adopted unanimously by the Forum parties.
The front bench decided to suspend formal approval of the report until Sinn Fein had been brought "on board". There was some concern also that the report did not make it sufficiently clear that recognition of the need for unionist consent to a settlement was contingent on the establishment of North South institutions.
Government and opposition sources in Leinster House felt that adoption of a possibly contentious report at this time might tend to weaken the position of key political figures in Sinn Fein.
The Forum report was also due to be published tomorrow afternoon, but senior political sources felt that this, too, should be postponed.
In view of the British government's support for elections to a Northern Ireland convention and republican doubts about elements of the Mitchell report on decommissioning, sources felt that the Forum report might only exacerbate a difficult situation.
Stressing that they had not rejected the report, Fianna Fail sources said the manner in which the consent issue had been approached could possibly be used to promote the idea of a Northern Ireland convention.
Critics of the report say that the loosening of the link between consent and the three stranded approach to a Northern Ireland settlement was mainly due to the influence of the Alliance Party, the only unionist party involved in drafting the document.
The report has also been criticised for giving insufficient attention to the issue of all Ireland institutions.
Observers said the wording of the report was sufficiently flexible to allow the possibility of Sinn Fein accepting a revised version at some future date, but they felt that, in the current climate, publication would be inappropriate.
Placing extra pressure on key Sinn Fein figures who were trying to maintain support for the IRA ceasefire would not be helpful to the peace process. See page 7