The Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, is today due to accept the veracity of the IRA ceasefire and invite Sinn Fein into talks next month. It is believed RUC and British army chiefs advised her on Tuesday that the ceasefire has been genuinely observed.
Dr Mowlam is expected to announce her judgment on the integrity of the IRA cessation today when there is still doubt whether the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) will engage in round-table talks involving Sinn Fein.
Dr Mowlam said on Tuesday - when, with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Burke, she signed a British-Irish agreement to establish an Independent International Body on Decommissioning - that she would take her decision today.
The British government defined a six-week period over which it would assess whether the ceasefire was genuine. This expires on Sunday.
The UUP is holding continuing talks with church, business and community groups over whether it should engage in talks with Sinn Fein. While some groups have urged the UUP to confront Sinn Fein in talks, the party leader, Mr David Trimble, has not yet decided.
However, he yesterday signalled his annoyance with the nature of the establishment of the international disarmament body. Mr Trimble complained that there was little detail in the agreement explaining how the body would operate.
"The agreement itself has very little content in it; that's the problem. We are waiting to see the `meat' of it, which has not yet appeared. We haven't yet consulted on the personnel, the structures, the way in which it will operate. Schemes have not yet been made (on how decommissioning might take place)," he said.
"All these things have to happen before there can be substantive talks," he said. He was "deeply sceptical" over whether the two governments could have a chairman appointed for the body and all the necessary detail completed in time for the opening of substantive talks on September 15th.
While Mr Trimble is still refusing to divulge whether he will participate in the talks, it was viewed as significant that his Upper Bann Constituency Association, at a meeting on Monday night, unanimously urged the UUP to remain in the talks.
Mr Mark Neill, of the association, said it was "very important" that the Upper Bann constituency took such a decision. "We believe that the Ulster Unionists have the best case, and that the Ulster Unionists will once again have to stand up for Northern Ireland and put the case forward for it," he told BBC Radio Ulster.
He said while the UUP should engage in the talks, it would be up to Mr Trimble and the party leadership to decide tactically whether to engage in inclusive round-table talks or proximity talks. Association members had total faith in Mr Trimble "in presenting the case for the Union".
However, the Sinn Fein chairman, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, said that on decommissioning, Mr Trimble was engaging in a tactical move intended to "subvert the potential for political change offered by a meaningful and inclusive process of negotiations".
He said Mr Trimble should "stop seeking excuses for not talking" and he urged the British and Irish governments to "stick by their commitments not to allow decommissioning to block progress in the talks".
"The people whom David Trimble has said he is consulting with - the civic section of unionism, the community sector, the social sector, the churches, and the business community - are telling us, and I am sure they are telling David Trimble, that they want unionists in the talks. And they want their chance for a permanent peace grasped."
