Senior Ulster Unionist Party and Sinn Fein negotiators return to Castle Buildings at Stormont today to try to thrash out an agreement over IRA decommissioning and devolution.
The indications are that the UUP leader, Mr David Trimble, could countenance Sinn Fein in an executive ahead of actual IRA decommissioning but that he is insisting that weapons must quickly follow and there must be certainty that disarmament will be completed by May next year.
Mr Ken Maginnis, the UUP security spokesman, intimated that there was room to manoeuvre around the concept of sequencing - a mutual UUP/Sinn Fein step-by-step approach whereby government might come before guns - but that there must be an assurance that all IRA weapons would be decommissioned.
"There are possibilities around the idea of sequencing but it has to be proper sequencing, and there has to be an indisputable outcome," he told The Irish Times last night.
Any deal negotiated by Mr Trimble and the Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, must involve "clarity" over the issue of IRA disarmament, Mr Maginnis added. Republicans could not have "two strings to their bow" - politics and paramilitarism - and must sign up solely to politics, he insisted.
The problem of providing the certainty on IRA disarmament required by unionists and the difficulty republicans have with signing up to any proposals that cannot be sold as a "voluntary" action on arms are expected to be at the heart of today's negotiations at Stormont.
The parties, assisted by Senator George Mitchell and British and Irish officials, are endeavouring to surmount this major obstacle, but so far have been unable to devise a solution that would satisfy Mr Trimble and Mr Adams, and more importantly their grassroots.
"One side wants to deal in specifics, the other wants matters to be vague. The question is how to bridge that gap," said a Dublin observer. Various talks sources insisted that Mr Adams and Mr Trimble were genuinely trying to find a path that would take the parties through these opposing positions, but that so far the "magic formula" had eluded them.
The UUP and Sinn Fein negotiating teams are continuing to show great sensitivity to each other's problems and while this has not yet translated into a compromise, it is indicative of their serious intent, they say.
Mr Adams, in an article in Saturday's Belfast Telegraph, said republicans "understand the difficulties and the challenges which this process presents to unionism and its leadership".
There has been speculation that part of any resolution may involve the IRA issuing a statement, perhaps saying that its war is over. Mr Adams gave no hint of this, but he did say: "We must pledge to each other there will be no turning back."
Sir Reg Empey, who with Mr Trimble forms the UUP negotiating team, said on Saturday that he understood that decommissioning was a "huge" and "very difficult" issue for republicans. But it was necessary to establish an "unbreakable peace". Senator Mitchell is still refusing to give any indication as to whether he would publish his own "best guess" proposals for breaking the deadlock. British and Irish sources believe he would do that only if he was assured that they would be accepted by both sides.
