A little-reported incident in north Belfast two weeks ago, in which three gunmen took over a house and held a family of five prisoner for almost two hours, has sent ripples of concern among both paramilitaries and the security forces in the city.
The house was a short distance from the home of a dissident loyalist figure and it is believed that gunmen, armed with two AK47 assault rifles, were intent on assassinating him.
An accomplice of the two gunmen is understood to have cut telephone wires at a junction box, to prevent the intended victim's family or neighbours from calling the police. The man did not appear at his home and the gunmen left shortly after midnight, stealing their captive family's car.
Sinn Fein quickly released a statement saying it believed the intended victim was one of its members. The RUC then issued a statement saying it was believed the intended victim was a Protestant man. According to senior paramilitary sources in Belfast, the intended victim was the dissident loyalist and the gunmen were members of the Provisional IRA.
It is believed the almost-nightly campaign of pipe-bomb and arson attacks against Catholic families and businesses by dissident loyalists may have put considerable strain on the IRA's ceasefire.
If the Provisionals had killed the man - a former Ulster Volunteer Force man who sided with the Loyalist Volunteer Force leader, Billy Wright, after the UVF ceasefire - there would almost certainly have been retaliatory murders by dissident loyalists. This could have pitched the North into a crisis running into the Orange marching season and the already-expected turmoil over Drumcree.
Sources close to the leaderships of the mainline loyalist paramilitary groups have this week expressed pessimism about the prospects for any significant political advances before the marching season. They also admit that it seems little can be done to stop the sectarian attacks being carried out by dissidents who are using names such as the Red Hand Defenders and Orange Volunteers as covers for their activities.
The sources say the pipe-bomb attacks and sectarian intimidation are being carried out by maverick elements primarily from the Ulster Defence Association - operating in Belfast, Antrim and parts of Derry - and the Loyalist Volunteer Force - operating in Armagh, parts of Co Down, mid-Ulster and in north Belfast. Their activities include the murders of the Catholic solicitor Rosemary Nelson and Portadown housewife Elizabeth O'Neill.
Despite being ostensibly on ceasefire, both the UDA and LVF are suspected of having killed Ms Nelson, and Portadown LVF members were responsible for throwing the pipe-bomb which killed Ms O'Neill. Loyalist sources say a sectarian campaign against Catholics in north Belfast and east Antrim is being directed by the UDA leader in Belfast's sprawling Rathcoole housing estate. A former UDA figure from north Belfast who joined Wright's LVF and now lives in Antrim town is said to be directing sectarian attacks in midAntrim. There is concern that one of these will direct a significant gun or bomb attack on Catholics.
While figures like these have been carrying out the violence, the statements of admission - occasionally containing Biblical references - are said to be coming from a number of extreme loyalists in Belfast and east Antrim.
One of these men has been associated with the extremes of loyalism for three decades and was an associate of the paedophile loyalist, Billy McGrath. The loyalist, who has been issuing statements admitting attacks and threatening a wide variety of people in the name of the Red Hand Defenders, is believed by police to be a paedophile.
He was the main suspect in the murder of a young Catholic boy, Brian McDermott, who was abducted and killed in 1976. Close associates are a man from Tiger Bay in north Belfast and a fundamentalist Protestant preacher who also lives in Belfast.
This small extreme group appears to be acting as a co-ordinating body for the disparate loyalist groups who have been carrying out the pipe-bomb and petrol-bomb attacks this year. Senior loyalists say the group intends to destabilise the North and make it difficult to achieve a political settlement which would include Sinn Fein in a Northern government.