WHILE the larger of the two loyalist paramilitary organisations, the Ulster Defence Association, appears content that the loyalist ceasefire is holding, conflicting views are again coming from the traditionally more militant Ulster Volunteer Force.
According to one senior source, in the UVF, the question of the loyalist ceasefire breaking is "not a question of `if', but `when'".
The UVF, it was pointed out, had regained the capacity to make and detonate car bombs before calling its ceasefire along with the UDA, in October 1994.
The UVF had stopped no warning bombings in 1977 after a six year campaign of tit for tat bomb attacks aimed at nationalist targets. The UVF also bombed Dublin in 1972 and 1974.
Significantly, a month before its ceasefire, on September 4th, 1994, the UVF detonated a car bomb outside near the Falls Road offices of Sinn Fein. The bomb exploded without warning and caused extensive damage to property but no injuries, as the road was empty at the time.
Six hours earlier, the SF president, Mr Gerry Adams, had addressed a rally of more than 1,000 people on the same spot.
The UVF had earlier tried to bomb a Sinn Fein social function at the Widow Scallans bar in Pearse Street, Dublin, in May, 1994, and had planted a bomb on the Belfast to Dublin train, but both failed to detonate.
According to security sources, the two Dublin bombs had failed because the UVF did not have access to commercial detonators. The Falls Road bomb used both a commercial detonator and Cordtex detonating fuse wire, according to the loyalists. The Falls Road bomb was the first loyalist car bombing in 17 years.
The UVF and UDA leaderships have both maintained ceasefires for six months since the IRA reverted to using violence. However, while the UDA appears content to continue its ceasefire, a combination of factors now appears to have put the UVF ceasefire at risk.
The UVF says it blames the Dublin government for the decision to ban the Drumcree Orangemen from marching along Garvaghy Road. It says, the RUC Chief Constable's decision was based on the interpretation of public, Order legislation put in place in Northern Ireland, under the auspices of the intergovernmental process after the controversial Orange demonstrations in Portadown following the 1985 Anglo Irish Agreement.
The view within the UVF is that the Orangemen were prevented from marching from Drumcree to appease nationalists and to prevent an outbreak of IRA violence within Northern Ireland. It also says there is a concerted campaign by the IRA and its supporters against people and property in areas of the North where Protestants are in the minority.
With media attention focused on the Orange march past the Catholic enclave at Garvaghy Road, Portadown, in the week before July 12th republican attacks on Protestant property attracted considerably less notice, according to the loyalists.
There were widespread attacks on Catholic property, particularly in Belfast, but there were also attacks on Protestant property across the North, with incidents of varying seriousness recorded in Newtownbutler and Newtownhamilton in Co Fermanagh; in the Duncairn, Oldpark, Torrens, Twaddell and Springfield areas of Belfast; at Castlewellan, Drumaness and Newcastle, Co Down; Coalisland, Omagh, Castlederg, and Ballygawley, in Co Tyrone; Bellaghy, Feeny and Dungiven, Co Derry, and in Derry city.
The most serious incident was the bombing of the Protestant owned Killyhevlin hotel in Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, on July 13th. No group has claimed responsibility but it is the view of police on both sides of the Border chat it was carried out by local IRA members or by a splinter republican group adhering to the political position of Republican Sinn Fein.
There have also been Sinn Fein supported boycotts of Protestant shops and businesses in nationalist areas of Fermanagh and Tyrone.
In north Belfast, there was a concerted campaign against the mainly elderly Protestant residents in Torrens, which is situated between the much larger Catholic districts in the Cliftonville Road and Ardoyne.
Mr Billy Hutchinson, the local representative of the Progressive Unionist Party, the political wing of the UVF, spent several nights after Drumcree in Torrens and, on a number of occasions had to call in the RUC and British army.
There were, according to local sources, calls for the loyalist "paramilitaries to bring out arms to defend Torrens. The situation was defused before it reached this stage.
The largely spontaneous loyalist disruption and street violence which occurred during this year's stand off at Drumcree left the UVF in a difficult position - seen to be maintaining a ceasefire which was no longer paying political dividends.
The loyalists also believe the IRA and, by extension, the cause of Irish nationalism, has profited from the renewed IRA bombing campaign in Britain. UVF sources say the only reason the IRA has not extended its campaign to Northern Ireland is because of security force successes in the Republic and Britain against the IRA.
The seizure of IRA bomb dumps, it is said, has caused the IRA to carry out an internal review of its security to discover how its operations have been penetrated. Once this process is completed, the loyalists argue, it is only a matter of time before the IRA begin's attacking targets inside Northern Ireland.
UVF sources say they are already preparing for a return to violence and that the likely target of bomb attacks would be in the Republic. The bomb scare which cleared O'Connell Street in Dublin for six hours two weeks ago was not the work of the UVF, the sources say, but of the UDA, which has no history of success in making large bombs.
The device found in a skip off O'Connell Street was a small, crude device similar to others made by the UDA before the 1994 ceasefires. It was not capable of causing widespread damage.
Meanwhile, security sources in the Border area are concerned that the group surrounding a loyalist figure known as "King Rat" in Portadown, Co Armagh, which was expelled from the UVF at the weekend, might also be planning a major gun attack on a Catholic target if a recurrence of the Drumcree crisis takes place after Saturday's Apprentice Boys demonstration.
It may be in anticipation of this that the UVF leadership might seek to re establish primacy in the world of loyalist paramilitarism by pre empting such an attack with one of its own operations.