The Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) will today confirm that the IRA is continuing to disavow paramilitarism and criminality as the Northern parties prepare for "hothouse" talks outside Ireland, most likely at St Andrews in Scotland.
Northern Secretary Peter Hain yesterday confirmed that Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and British prime minister Tony Blair will host intensive talks next month with the parties at a location that is virtually certain to be in Scotland. One senior source said that St Andrews would be the venue.
The talks are scheduled for the second week in October after the IMC on October 4th publishes what is expected to be a positive report on IRA activity.
Mr Ahern and Mr Blair hope that the report will produce further evidence that the IRA has moved away from paramilitarism and criminality, and help coax the DUP into sharing power with Sinn Féin.
An IMC report that is being published this afternoon on normalisation of British army demilitarisation will additionally confirm that the IRA is eschewing such activity, one well-placed source said yesterday.
This report will mainly focus on demilitarisation, but will make brief reference to the IMC's conviction that the IRA poses no paramilitary threat and is meeting its commitments of last year to end all activity, added the source. Normalisation can only take place as long as the IRA and other paramilitaries are perceived as no major threat to such scaling down of the British army presence.
The Ulster Unionist Party, the SDLP and the DUP have expressed misgivings about holding political negotiations outside the North citing the cost of such talks, while Sinn Féin's Martin McGuinness indicated that his party was neutral on the matter. Similar talks outside Northern Ireland were held at various critical stages of the peace process, most notably at Weston Park in Shropshire in 2001 and at Leeds Castle in Kent in 2004.
Mr Hain said the outside venue was chosen in order to "concentrate minds", adding: "I think it's much better to get away from the day-to-day issues and diary pressures that face all politicians and would face people if they were in Stormont or at Hillsborough or some other location suitable in Northern Ireland.
"This will be a working conference of intensive negotiations. This is not some kind of stately home exercise for its own sake; it's a very, very important event."
Mr Hain said there was constructive engagement between the parties, including Sinn Féin and the DUP, on the Assembly programme for government committee during the summer. DUP and other party sources said progress could be made by the governments' November 24th deadline for a deal, but that it might take until early next year to finally establish whether a deal was possible.
However, Mr Hain said there could be "no question of the deadline being extended" and that if there was not agreement by then the Assembly would close and members would lose their pay and allowances on November 24th. "Look, Northern Ireland has had deadline after deadline, after deadline, and for all sorts of good reasons in the past they've been extended. This one won't be.
"The shutters will come down at one minute past midnight on November 24th, Stormont will be closed up, salaries and allowances and all of that will disappear," he insisted.
Urging politicians to do a deal he said he could not "bulldoze" them into striking an accord. "Only the parties can travel the distance and complete the journey - it is down to them."
