Sinn Fein and UUP remain locked in talks

Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionists remained locked in talks last night, as key political sources expressed continuing confidence…

Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionists remained locked in talks last night, as key political sources expressed continuing confidence that they could still quickly conclude a deal for the creation of Northern Ireland's power-sharing executive by early December.

However, it is understood the IRA's "bottom line" on decommissioning has not yet been defined, as pressure builds for a speedy conclusion to the Mitchell review, now in its 10th week.

The Ulster Unionists are believed to have rejected a draft republican statement over the weekend because it did not provide a clear and unambiguous commitment to an actual arms hand-over in the context of the overall implementation of the Belfast Agreement.

As at all stages in the review process, the UUP is insisting on a specific undertaking to be effectively underwritten by the International Commission that at least some actual decommissioning would occur soon after the appointment of the executive. Given such an undertaking, it is widely believed, Mr David Trimble would convene an emergency meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council to seek his party's approval for the prior creation of the executive.

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Specifically, however, it seems clear that Mr Trimble and his most senior colleagues will not accept the appointment of an IRA interlocutor to deal with the International Commission as evidence enough of the republican movement's commitment to "the process of decommissioning" as envisaged in the terms of the Good Friday accord.

Despite the ongoing difficulties sources close to the process continued to expect that Senator George Mitchell might soon be in a position to conclude a Sinn Fein-Ulster Unionist agreement on a sequence of events and statements leading to the triggering of the d'Hondt procedure for the appointment of ministers by the end of this month.

Any sequencing arrangement would almost certainly involve separate statements by the Ulster Unionists, Sinn Fein and the other pro-agreement parties; Senator Mitchell and the two governments; the Provisional IRA; and the chairman of the International Commission, Gen. John de Chastelain.

Whether it will happen now clearly turns on Gen. de Chastelain's eagerly awaited "assessment" of the decommissioning possibilities to Senator Mitchell and the parties to the review.

Sources across a wide political spectrum now seem to accept that Mr Trimble will be unable to risk a confrontation with his anti-agreement dissidents, unless the general's assessment represents an advance on his report last July at the time the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, proclaimed "a seismic shift" in republican attitudes.

At that time Gen. de Chastelain said the process of decommissioning could begin within a matter of days of devolution.