The Northern Ireland Office has confirmed that Sinn Fein cannot be excluded from the review process even if the Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, next week deems the IRA to have broken its ceasefire.
An NIO spokeswoman said that the automatic expulsion mechanism which existed during the allparty negotiations did not apply to the review process, due to begin next month under the chairmanship of the former US senator, Mr George Mitchell. She said that as a result of the signing of the Belfast Agreement, Dr Mowlam was obligated to keep the ceasefires of paramilitary groups under review in relation to the prisoner early-release scheme but not in relation to party talks.
"Mr Mitchell will be reviewing the Belfast Agreement with all signatories of that agreement. All signatories are eligible to be there," the spokeswoman added.
The NIO decision falls in line with yesterday's call from the SDLP for an end to speculation that Sinn Fein could be expelled from the review process if the IRA was deemed to have broken its ceasefire.
The SDLP senior negotiator, Mr Mark Durkan, had urged the British and Irish governments to end the "unnecessary uncertainty", which he claimed was damaging the political process.
Mr Durkan said he raised the point with Dr Mowlam during a meeting on Tuesday and "she didn't resist, in fact she readily accepted" that Sinn Fein could not be expelled.
The Ulster Unionist delegation which met Dr Mowlam on Wednesday is also believed to have been informed of her inability to exclude Sinn Fein.
"The issue was building up to a big misunderstanding next week," said Mr Durkan. "It needed to be clarified because there seemed to be a lot of people labouring under a misapprehension over the issue.
"Participation in the review does not depend on an invitation from the Secretary of State as was the case with the negotiations themselves," he added.
A Sinn Fein spokesman last night said that the party had always maintained there was no basis for exclusion.
"We're glad to see that the NIO and the British government now accept the position and we hope that continuing talks of exclusion will end and everybody will engage in implementing the agreement we all signed," he added.
The party spokesman claimed that any halt to prisoner releases on the basis of a breach of the IRA ceasefire was wrong and without basis. "The prisoners have no control over matters, they should not be punished." The Ulster Unionist MP, Mr Ken Maginnis, yesterday reiterated his view that Sinn Fein should not be excluded from the review, notwithstanding the fact that a number of his colleagues and anti-agreement unionists had called for the party's expulsion.
According to Mr Maginnis, until the review is complete there would be no advance in the political process and therefore there was nothing tangible that Sinn Fein could actually be expelled from.
Exclusion would also have presented Sinn Fein "propagandists" with another "international coup", he said. The leader of the anti-agreement UK Unionist Party, Mr Robert McCartney, said yesterday that the question of whether any parties should be excluded from the review did not yet arise.
He said the rejection of one of the three principles laid out in the Way Forward document - commitment to total decommissioning by May 2000, decommissioning overseen by Gen de Chastelain's commission, and commitment to an inclusive executive - meant a party was not eligible to attend the review.
Sinn Fein, the PUP and the UDP have yet to publicly accept the principle of total disarmament by May 2000, he added.
Meanwhile, Mr David Adams, a spokesman for the UDP, which is linked to the UDA/UFF, has said the onus for decommissioning still lies with the Provisional IRA.
He added that the UDA/UFF have not changed their position on the arms issue and only a start to actual decommissioning by republicans would change the attitude of mainstream loyalists.