PUP leader in talks with Hain

Progressive Unionist leader Dawn Purvis will have talks with Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Peter Hain later today.

Progressive Unionist leader Dawn Purvis will have talks with Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Peter Hain later today.

She will head up a delegation going to Stormont, in the last of a series of meetings that also involved talks with the Chief Constable Sir Hugh Orde and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.

This afternoon's agenda includes the long-term engagement of loyalism within the political process, the government's commitment to the Good Friday Agreement and a discussion on the "principle of consent".

With the restoration of the powersharing executive at Stormont next Tuesday, the UVF is expected to make some sort of announcement on its future within the next few days.

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The organisation is under pressure to follow the IRA's lead and end all criminality and to decommission all weapons.

Ms Purvis, a member of the Northern Ireland Assembly, said her party had been working to ensure that all sections of society had a stake in the new political dispensation.