The review of the Belfast Agreement, due to begin next Monday week, will have to be postponed if the Ulster Unionist Party legally challenges the Northern Ireland Secretary's ruling that the IRA has not broken its ceasefire, according to the party's deputy leader, Mr John Taylor.
Mr Taylor said yesterday that the party's Assembly group will receive legal advice next Tuesday on whether to contest Dr Mo Mowlam's decision not to penalise Sinn Fein or IRA prisoners for alleged IRA murder and gun-running.
Members such as Mr Jeffrey Donaldson and Union First Assembly member, Mr Peter Weir, a barrister, believe that there are good grounds for taking a judicial review to question legally the validity of her adjudication.
The UUP leader, Mr David Trimble, agreed after meeting Mr Donaldson in Belfast yesterday that the party should obtain legal advice about such a challenge.
Mr Taylor said that Dr Mowlam's decision not to censure Sinn Fein or the IRA, despite her belief that the IRA murdered Charles Bennett, a Belfast man, and tried to import guns from the US, should prompt unionists to consider whether to participate in Senator George Mitchell's review, which is aimed at breaking the deadlock over decommissioning and the formation of a power-sharing executive.
"If we decide to challenge her ruling, which would be based on the legal advice and the political wisdom of taking such action, then the review would have to be postponed", Mr Taylor said.
He maintained that the prospects of the review succeeding had been damaged by Dr Mowlam's ruling.
According to Mr Donaldson, the main plank of any legal challenge is likely to be the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Act 1998. In particular, the legal focus will be based on criteria that those entitled to early prisoner releases are organisations "maintaining a complete and unequivocal ceasefire" and organisations which are not "involved in any acts of violence or preparation for violence".
The killing of Mr Bennett and the Florida gun-smuggling operation, in which Dr Mowlam believes the IRA had involvement, would indicate that the IRA did not meet those criteria, and prisoner releases should therefore be halted, Mr Donaldson said.
Ms Bairbre de Brun, a Sinn Fein Assembly member, accused unionists of applying double standards in considering a judicial review. She claimed that unionists had shown no concern about loyalist attacks on nationalists.
"We have nearly a year and a half now of almost nightly attacks on Catholics in those constituencies where the Ulster Unionists and others are represented either as MPs or as members of the Assembly. They did not run to the courts over that", she said.
Mr Donaldson said that he had consistently condemned attacks on nationalists in his Lagan Valley constituency.
Mr Seamus Close, deputy leader of the Alliance Party, opposed the idea of a judicial review. Rather than going to the courts, politicians should concentrate on ending the impasse through the review, he said.
Mr Nigel Dodds, secretary of the DUP, criticising pro-agreement unionists, the Irish Government and the SDLP, said that Dr Mowlam was not alone in "putting expediency above decency and democracy".
Mr Dodds said that Dublin stood indicted of hypocrisy. "While IRA killers of gardai are rightly told they will not get out of jail early, in Ulster, Dublin advocates the flinging open of the prison doors no matter what atrocities are still being carried out by the IRA."
The SDLP, by refusing to support the punishment of Sinn Fein and the IRA, and "yes" unionists, by their "desperate" attempts to keep the agreement alive at all costs, were "just as guilty as Mowlam", he added.
