The Government is on a potential collision course with Mr David Trimble over the timing of inaugural meetings of the North-South Ministerial Council and the BritishIrish Council, both to be established under the terms of the Belfast Agreement.
Mr Trimble, Northern Ireland's First Minister-designate, is urging that initial meetings of both councils be held during the first week of October - before he and the Deputy First Minister, Mr Seamus Mallon, join Dr Mo Mowlam and the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Gordon Brown, on a 10-day promotional visit to the United States.
But Irish Ministers, backed by both the SDLP and Sinn Fein, are insisting that all the new institutional structures prescribed by the Agreement - including, crucially, the "shadow" Northern Ireland Executive - should come into being at the same time.
In the continuing absence of a shadow Executive, Mr Trimble apparently takes the view that he and Mr Mallon constitute Northern Ireland's transitional administration, and that the work of the North-South and British-Irish councils can proceed on that basis.
Irish sources acknowledge that the disagreement is rooted in some ambiguity in the agreement about the precise nature of the transitional arrangements envisaged pending the transfer of powers to the Assembly.
However, they insist that the work programme which the North-South Ministerial Council is tasked to complete by October 31st cannot realistically be agreed until the shape of the new Belfast administration has been defined, and without input from those expecting to hold ministerial office.
Official and political sources on all sides last night acknowledged that Mr Trimble's latest move could hasten an inevitable showdown over the creation of the Executive and the issue of Sinn Fein's entitlement to join it without any prior decommissioning of IRA weapons.
Without seeking to exaggerate the scale of the impasse, one senior Sinn Fein source told The Irish Times yesterday: "We're up against potentially the biggest crisis of the entire process." The decisions taken in the next month, he said, would be "critical".
He was speaking shortly before the Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, issued a public warning to the First Minister. Mr Trimble, he said, "should not lose his nerve . . . nor should he engage in brinkmanship on this issue".
Mr Adams said that the Agreement set out a clear timetable and chronology "in respect to establishing the Executive, the departmental structures, a fully-functional all-Ireland Ministerial Council and the Civic Forum". Unionists of all hues, he said, wanted the Assembly, but could not "cherry-pick or re-run the Good Friday Agreement or the referendums".
Mr Adams said: "Under the Agreement, there can be no Assembly without these interdependent and interlocking institutions. In other words, there needs to be no further delay in forming the Executive and the other structures. This must be done within the time frame set out by the Agreement."
The Sinn Fein president continued: "To raise decommissioning now as a precondition is a clear breach of the Agreement. All parties are obliged to fulfil their commitments in all respects. Sinn Fein will fulfil its commitments. The two governments and the First Minister-designate, David Trimble, must fulfil theirs."
The IRA is believed to have located several burial sites of the so-called "disappeared", those abducted and murdered over 20 years ago, writes Maol Muire Tynan. It is preparing to identify sites so that the bodies can be returned to their families. Several sites have been found following an IRA decision last autumn to search for those who went missing during the Troubles.
SF signals willingness to influence IRA on arms; IRA is poised to identify graves of victims: page 6