The Faith and Politics Group, made up of Catholics and Protestants from the North and South, has said there is a need now for "a sufficiently trusted third party or parties" to help resolve the decommissioning issue in the North.
In a statement, it notes that this role has been given to the decommissioning body under Gen John de Chastelain, "but it will also require the active support of the British and Irish governments, who are the linchpins of the agreement, together with the US government".
Most of all, it said, "all the people of Northern Ireland need to decide that the implementation of the [Belfast] agreement is more important than any particular issue".
The agreement must be implemented as a whole, it said. a la carte manner. Linkages between issues should not be created "when there are no such linkages in the agreement".
It said republicans were right when they pointed out that the agreement did not require IRA decommissioning as the price of Sinn Fein entry into the executive, and noted that "the terms and timing of decommissioning are not clearly expressed in the agreement".
However, the statement goes on to say that, in its judgment, "were [there] any attempt to create an executive without some decommissioning, the position of pro-agreement unionists would become untenable and the agreement would collapse".
It also recognised the difficulties for Sinn Fein on IRA decommissioning and that republicans "need reassurance from unionists that this is the last obstacle preventing Sinn Fein participation in the executive.
"The goal has to be political arrangements which are supported by a broad political consensus in Northern Ireland, and where the state, governed by the rule of law, has a monopoly of force," it said. This, it noted, was a situation which had never been the case in the North "and, given this history, we cannot move overnight to such a situation".
