The RUC's confirmation that it suspects Provisional IRA involvement in the murder of Mr Andrew Kearney has presented Dr Mo Mowlam, the Northern Ireland Secretary, with an immediate political dilemma.
The Secretary of State is due next week to publish an order listing those organisations whose members are entitled to benefit from the two-year programme of prisoner releases after the Northern Ireland (Sentences) Bill receives the royal assent.
The Ulster Unionist MP, Mr Jeffrey Donaldson, said that Dr Mowlam's decision would represent the first test of the government's assurance that "there can be no fudge between democracy and terror".
While the wider political implications of IRA involvement, if established conclusively, would be for consideration by the Assembly when it reconvenes in the autumn, official sources last night said that the Secretary of State probably could not delay presentation of the order bringing the prisoner-release programme into play. And they said she faced some "hard thinking" over the weekend.
The RUC statement meanwhile provoked complaints from anti-agreement MPs that the mechanisms for the exclusion of parties not abiding by purely peaceful and democratic methods were inadequate. And it further increased pressure on Mr David Trimble to resist Sinn Fein's entry into the Northern Ireland Executive without the prior decommissioning of IRA weapons.
Mr John Taylor, the Ulster Unionist leader's deputy, said he did not believe the attempts to secure Sinn Fein's exclusion from office would succeed because they needed the support of the SDLP, which they would not get.
In a further indication that he might vote against the Northern Ireland Bill on next week's third reading, Mr Taylor told MPs: "We will have a situation where an organisation is serving in the government of a country and at the same time is out killing people. We have a Bill which is quite weak and which doesn't reflect the Belfast Agreement."
Mr Reg Empey, who is expected to be one of the Ulster Unionist members of the Executive, said: "I think this puts Sinn Fein in a very difficult position. They have to be committed to peaceful and non-violent means and it is abundantly clear they are not committed to that."
According to the Rev Ian Paisley, the DUP leader, the RUC's belief that the IRA was responsible for the killing of Mr Kearney meant Dr Mowlam should now ban Sinn Fein from the Assembly. "She's got to decide whether she's going to allow these Sinn Fein men to take their seats. She should say it's now clear that IRA-Sinn Fein are inextricably linked and they are still organising acts of violence, therefore they can't go forward and take their seats in the executive."
Meanwhile, the government yesterday agreed to look again at its powers to dissolve the new Assembly. During the committee stage of the Northern Ireland Bill, implementing the Belfast Agreement, Mr Trimble complained that the Secretary of State's power to dissolve the Assembly, if this was considered in the public interest, was "fundamentally objectionable" and undermined the democratic process.
The Minister of State, Mr Paul Murphy, said that he would consult the Northern Ireland parties on the issue during the summer recess: "Our view is that we shouldn't plan for failure, we should plan for success . . . I think we ought to take this back and have another look at it."