The British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, is considering imposing a deadline - possibly the anniversary of the Belfast Agreement next month - for agreement on the formation of an executive, according to a Downing Street spokesman.
Mr Blair's official spokesman said yesterday that the original date of March 10th for the transfer of powers to the Assembly had always been a "target" rather than a deadline.
A deadline for devolution including agreement on an executive was now under consideration by Mr Blair, the spokesman added. This could be April 10th, the anniversary of the signing of the Belfast Agreement.
The spokesman made his comments after the Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, briefed British cabinet colleagues on the current state of the political process yesterday morning. "We remain absolutely confident it (the executive) will happen", he said.
"Mo said, despite the difficulties, she remains optimistic that given there's overwhelming support to make the agreement work, we will get there in the end," Mr Blair's spokesman said.
Meanwhile, the Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, has called for an independent inquiry after a former UDA leader alleged that the RUC, British army and the UDR supplied loyalist paramilitaries with intelligence information on IRA suspects.
The RUC and British army, according to former UDA commander Mr Bobby Philpott, regularly handed over details of reputed IRA members, including photographs, montages, home addresses and locations of "safe houses" to loyalists.
He said the UDA, under its Ulster Freedom Fighters (UFF) cover-name, could not have carried out its attacks and murders without the support of the RUC and British army.
"I was getting that many documents that I didn't know where to put them," Mr Philpott told BBC journalist Peter Taylor. The allegations will be broadcast on Sunday night in the series, Loyalists.
The information was being fed to the loyalist paramilitaries in the late 1980s and early 1990s at a time when loyalists murdered 27 members of the IRA, Sinn Fein and members of their families, according to the programme.
Another 105 Catholics were also murdered during the same period in the five-year run-up to the loyalist ceasefire declaration in October l994, the programme reports.
Mr Philpott said the RUC and British army, including the UDR, assisted loyalist paramilitaries to target alleged republicans. He said he was getting documents "day by day".
Apart from orthodox intelligence information, he was being told "what colour socks republicans were wearing, what colour jumpers they were wearing, what sort of cars they drove, where they lived, where they lived in different homes which they regarded as safe houses".
Mr Philpott was asked: "Could the UFF have done what it did without that degree of help from inside the security forces?"
Mr Philpott replied: "No."
The RUC said claims of official collusion had been investigated in the past and there was nothing to support them.
The fresh allegations come as the British government faces renewed pressure to order an independent judicial inquiry into the murder of Belfast solicitor Mr Pat Finucane, shot by the UDA at his north Belfast home 10 years ago.
Mr John Taylor, deputy leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, told the same programme: "The loyalist paramilitaries achieved something which perhaps the security forces would never have achieved, and that was they were a significant contribution to the IRA finally accepting that they couldn't win."
