Despite a stark warning from the Northern Ireland Secretary, Dr Mowlam, Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionist Party were last night still refusing to reveal whether they would engage in the review designed to break the impasse over IRA decommissioning and the formation of an inclusive executive.
The North's First Minister, Mr David Trimble, even hinted that the UUP may delay its decision until Monday, the day former US senator Mr George Mitchell is due to set his review in motion.
Mr Trimble said yesterday: "We are having a meeting tomorrow, we will have a meeting on Saturday, and no doubt we will have a meeting on Monday as well."
Yesterday, Dr Mowlam told Sinn Fein and the UUP that they owed it to the people of Northern Ireland not to walk away from the Mitchell review of the peace process. Speaking about the Patten report on the future of policing, she indicated that politicians and the public must prepare for inevitable changes to the RUC.
The Patten commission yesterday confirmed that the report would be officially released next Thursday. A spokesman said it was a very lengthy document that contained well over 100 proposals.
Dr Mowlam, speaking in Carrickfergus, Co Antrim, yesterday defended her decision not to penalise republican prisoners for instances of alleged IRA murder and gun-running and warned that in the absence of a political settlement and an acceptable police service, violence would continue.
"The reality is that unless there is a proper, working political settlement that both sides can live with, unless the police here are accepted by the whole community, terrorism will never be defeated," she told pupils at Ulidia integrated school.
Despite all the recent problems, the "basic desire" of the general population in Northern Ireland was to see the Belfast Agreement work. "And that is why the parties should be in there talking to each other, in the Mitchell review, not walking away," said Dr Mowlam. Sinn Fein Assembly member Ms Bairbre de Brun, after meeting the new political development minister, Mr George Howarth, said the party's ardchomhairle would decide in Dublin on Saturday.
"Obviously during our deliberations we will take into account the deep scepticism the nationalist/ republican people are expressing about events on the ground," she said. The DUP has also suggested that it may boycott the review. The DUP deputy leader, Mr Peter Robinson, said Dr Mowlam was not applying the rules of democracy.
"She is trying to apply the rules of terrorism, that you can shoot people and still be entitled to be in government, that you can shoot people but still get your prisoners out, that you can obviously breach your ceasefire and still be part of a talks and political process. That simply is not on," he said. Pro-agreement parties expressed annoyance and frustration with the stances of Sinn Fein and the UUP, as was reflected in the comments of SDLP negotiator Mr Sean Farren. "By their refusals to declare a wholehearted commitment to next week's review, both the UUP and Sinn Fein have exposed themselves as playing party politics with the will of the people," he said. Dr Mowlam, in defending her judgment that the IRA ceasefire was breached but not broken, spoke of special circumstances applying in Northern Ireland. "Life in Northern Ireland is sometimes not as straightforward as it would be elsewhere," she said.
"When the IRA ordered teenagers to leave Dungannon last week, some at least, small in number in the local community, supported that action because they said they could not support the police.
"That I find very disturbing, but it is a reality we have to deal with - and a reality behind part of the Patten commission on policing and its work," she said. Dr Mowlam also criticised the Conservative Party and its leader, Mr William Hague, for the assertion that IRA prisoner releases should have been halted following the alleged IRA gun-running and the murder of Charles Bennett.
"The sniping is also coming from the Conservative Party. That disappoints me because I believe bipartisanship is important to the process. They seem to be backing off from that," she said.
