The Irish and British governments will today try to persuade the Northern parties to engage in a series of round-table talks that would solely address the issue of IRA and other paramilitary activity.
Irish and British ministers will meet the parties in a series of trilateral meetings at Parliament Buildings, Stormont. The single focus on paramilitarism results from the political turmoil triggered by the alleged IRA attack on republican dissident Mr Bobby Tohill.
PSNI chief constable Mr Hugh Orde repeated yesterday that the IRA was behind the failed attempt to abduct Mr Tohill but said that the organisation was not planning to return "to war".
"I am convinced that the Provisional IRA have no intention of going back to war in the terms of attacking police officers or members of the army," he said.
"But they are also doing other activity that is not consistent with paragraph 13 (of the joint declaration which requires all paramilitaries to end all activity). They need to stop it as do the UDA," Mr Orde told UTV last night.
All the Northern parties will be involved in the trilaterals today after the Ulster Unionist leader Mr David Trimble, who had threatened to bring down the current review of the Belfast Agreement this week, appeared to stand back from that position by saying he would meet the ministers.
The Minister for Arts, Sports and Tourism, Mr O'Donoghue, with the Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Mr Tom Kitt, will join the Northern Secretary, Mr Paul Murphy, as they seek to persuade the parties to participate in plenary meetings addressing republican and loyalist paramilitarism.
Mr O'Donoghue is standing in for the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, who is in Washington today briefing US politicians including senators Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd on the peace process.
The governments want the parties to agree to a series of round-table talks dealing with paramilitarism beginning next Tuesday. One of the main obstacles to such a plenary session is persuading the DUP in particular to sit down with Sinn Féin.
The DUP joined the governments and all the parties including Sinn Féin when the review began. A party spokesman said however that that round-table meeting was called to allow parties read out stated positions and that the party would not engage in a process that would involve direct negotiation with Sinn Féin.
This poses a difficult challenge for the governments to design some format that could permit both Sinn Féin and the DUP to be in the same room addressing the same issue.
Mr Trimble, while saying he would meet the ministers today, again demanded that the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) should immediately report on the Tohill incident, rather than in May as the governments promised last week.
