London Editor
MR Tony Blair is expected to have a final consultation with the Taoiseach, Mr Bruton, this morning ahead of his eagerly-awaited Commons statement detailing his "last chance" offer to Sinn Fein to join the so-called settlement train.
And while 10 Downing Street appeared to play down expectations Mr John Hume, the SDLP leader, expressed the clear hope that a major breakthrough was possible.
Emerging from a very positive and very constructive" meeting with the British Prime Minister, Mr Hume said Mr Blair had "clearly opened the door to lasting peace". The SDLP leader said the opportunity for an end to violence and all-party talks was "now clearly on the table, in my opinion."
A nervous Ulster Unionist leadership, meanwhile, was reserving judgment on Mr Blair's proposed statement, having earlier pressed the Prime Minister for "clarification" of the British-Irish proposals for removing the `decommissioning' roadblock to substantive political negotiations on the future of Northern Ireland.
Already under fire from rival unionist leaders, Mr David Trimble moved swiftly to scotch early reports that he had approved the British-Irish plan - detailed today in The Irish Times - to place the decommissioning issue within the remit of an Independent Commission operating in accordance with the Mitchell Report recommendations.
Under the proposals London and Dublin will ask the parties to agree mechanisms "for achieving further progress on decommissioning alongside progress in the three strands" of the talks process, and to the launch of substantive political negotiations beginning on September 15th.
But in the preamble to their proposal, the two governments will reaffirm their commitment to build on commitments by the parties "to bring about due progress on decommissioning" without allowing the issue to serve as a brake on the negotiation process.
After his meeting with Mr Blair yesterday morning, Mr Trimble appeared to give a guarded welcome to the proposal, saying his party was happy to go along with "parallel decommissioning". However, he maintained there would have to be physical evidence of an IRA handover of weapons before Sinn Fein could be admitted to substantive negotiations.
And it subsequently emerged that Mr Trimble, and fellow MPs Mr John Taylor and Mr Ken Maginnis, told Mr Blair they did not believe the existing plan contained any guarantee that decommissioning would actually happen in the process envisaged.
Mr Maginnis later told Channel 4 News that his party's "base-line" had not changed: "Parallel decommissioning means parallel disarmament. It means that if you begin inclusive talks, you on the same day actually begin to disarm."
Specifically, Mr Trimble and his colleagues are understood to have pressed Mr Blair for an assurance that he shared their understanding that the Mitchell Report required "actual decommissioning" of weapons in parallel to negotiations.
They are also thought to have asked Mr Blair to make plain that decommissioning would not be traded for other `confidence-building measures', and to agree to establish the proposed Independent Commission well in advance of the September target date for the commencement of substantive political negotiations.
But while hoping for further assurances from Mr Blair's statement to MPs in the Commons, senior unionists last night acknowledged that Mr Blair could not amend the talks blueprint finally agreed with Mr Bruton in New York on Monday. To underline this point, Dr Mo Mowlam, the Northern Ireland Secretary, said there was no question of the agreed paper being amended.
As she left the Stormont talks, Dr Mowlam said: "As Tony Blair has kept saying, we want to get movement on these issues so that we can get into substantive talks in September."
In addition to the decommissioning proposals, Mr Blair will today publish the minutes of talks between his officials and Sinn Fein, and the aide-memoire sent to Sinn Fein on June 13th confirming that in the event of an unequivocal restoration of the IRA ceasefire Sinn Fein could expect to be admitted to the Stormont talks within a six-week period.
He will also repeat his determination to proceed in the talks process without Sinn Fein, should the IRA attempt to continue to operate its "twin track" policy combining politics with violence. Speaking on BBC Radio 4's The World Tonight last night Sinn Fein vice-president, Pat Doherty said Sinn Fein needed another face-to-face meeting with British officials to secure the clarity it sought, but he said that if the clarification "happens in another way that is to our satisfaction we will obviously consider that".