There have been indications in recent days of the British and Irish governments engaging in preparatory work to try to facilitate a positive IRA statement on its future intentions.
Northern Secretary Peter Hain said in Belfast yesterday that his hope was that a "credible" IRA statement would not be underestimated.
While in Navan on Monday night, Minister for Justice Michael McDowell warned the DUP that the party would not be allowed to undermine the North-South dimension of the Belfast Agreement, even if the party attempted to make the agreement's "institutions unworkable". It was also announced that the British army is to reduce troop numbers based in Northern Ireland by a further 550.
A new effort to try to recover the bodies of the "disappeared" people killed by the IRA is also to be initiated by the British and Irish governments.
There was an expectation that the IRA would respond in the coming weeks to the call by Sinn Féin president, Gerry Adams, for the organisation to wholly embrace peace and democracy.
Tensions over the annual marching season have raised a question mark over whether the IRA might delay that response until the end of the summer or early autumn. Those concerns were exacerbated yesterday after the Orange Order in Belfast said it would not accept the Parades Commission ruling to reroute the annual Whiterock parade in west Belfast on Saturday.
Some significance is attached, however, to the comments of Mr Hain and Mr McDowell about troop reductions and the moves on the "disappeared", as there is a pattern of the governments acting to smooth the way for previous major moves by the IRA.
Mr Hain told an Ictu conference in Belfast yesterday that he was "genuinely optimistic" that a powersharing Northern executive could be restored. That would require the IRA clearly, definitively and permanently to end violence and criminality and this would have to be tested over time, he said.
North Belfast DUP MP Nigel Dodds said that "those who allow themselves to become fixated on an IRA statement only serve to further strengthen the hand of the Sinn Féin/IRA terror machine . . . Any Sinn Féin/IRA commitment to exclusively peaceful and democratic means will only be meaningful when the unionist community is convinced that it is for real. That will take a long time".
Mr McDowell, speaking to the Navan Peace Group on Monday night, addressed some of his remarks directly to the DUP. He said the Belfast Agreement proposed a society based on mutual respect "in which Irish nationality is not merely simply tolerated but respected". He rejected "DUP rhetoric that Dublin should be seen as a foreign state". He said the Republic in the Belfast Agreement did a deal with the UK, registered by the UN, "that gives the North-South dimension and the sense of Irishness, and all of those institutions, real substantial legal status".
Part of the deal was that there should be a united Ireland when a majority of the people of Northern Ireland supported one.
"That's the deal, and we are not going to allow anybody walk away from that deal," he said.
Mr McDowell and Mr Hain said the Irish and British governments would fund new efforts to locate the bodies of missing people murdered by the IRA. This would include appointing a forensic archaeologist to assist in the searches.
