The tribunal of inquiry set up by the British government last April to re-investigate the Bloody Sunday killings in Derry 27 years ago has delayed the start of the formal hearing of evidence by six months.
A representative of the Inquiry's chairman, Lord Saville of Newdigate, said yesterday the tribunal had proposed the start of the hearing should be postponed until next February.
"The tribunal has concluded that there is still a very substantial amount of work to be done in gathering documentary evidence, taking witness statements and commissioning the reports of experts. Rather than compromise the thoroughness of the inquiry, the tribunal has proposed that the start of the hearing be postponed until February 1999."
The representative added that since last April's opening statement in Derry's Guildhall about the January 1972 killings of 14 men in the city's Bogside, the tribunal's staff had been analysing information before the start of the full hearings.
Tribunal staff say they have approached public records in Kew and in Northern Ireland, the British Library, four British government departments, the Irish Government and the RUC as well as journalists, television companies, hospitals and coroners.
A preliminary hearing will be held in the Guildhall on July 20th.