Republicans must decide whether they have a genuine plan to resolve the decommissioning issue or if the flurry of activity on Friday ahead of the suspension of the executive was just a PR exercise, the Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble, said yesterday. He did not know whether there was a new IRA plan, he said, and "the ball is very definitely still in their court".
Mr Trimble said it was "make your mind up time" for Sinn Fein and the entire republican movement. "Do they want to be part of the political process? Do they want to commit themselves to politics? If so, they know what they have to do."
He did not see anything, however, in the second report from the de Chastelain decommissioning body that could be described as a plan to decommission by the IRA. "If there is anything there, then well and good, and I think that the onus must really be on the republicans to bring something forward," he told BBC's Breakfast with Frost.