AS senior Sinn Fein members continue to insist there will be no IRA decommissioning before an Assembly executive is formed, Mr Seamus Mallon has mooted a possible formula to break the deadlock on the issue.
The North's Deputy First Minister suggested yesterday that a republican commitment to decommission and a timetable for disarmament could be a way around the logjam. He indicated that Gen John de Chastelain's decommissioning body was the best vehicle to secure such a commitment and timetable.
Mr Mallon warned against the Ulster Unionist Party holding to an "absolute" position of demanding some prior IRA decommissioning before an executive is formed. "If they hold rigidly to that line then there are going to be very grave difficulties at the end of the month," he said.
"If they are prepared to move their way around that position, and from that position into a type of approach that I believe has more chance of getting decommissioning out of the IRA, then we could be moving forward," Mr Mallon told RTE's This Week programme.
He said that while the demand for disarmament was reasonable it did not appear practical at this stage. Part of the "choreography" of finding a compromise was that the UUP would accept a commitment and a timetable for decommissioning that would be agreed with Gen de Chastelain.
"We have to try and get a means that will allow that [decommissioning] to begin to happen, to allow the Ulster Unionist Party to accept much less than they have publicly stated, and Sinn Fein to do much more than they have publicly promised," he said.
Sinn Fein, however, was still firmly holding to its line that there would be no IRA disarmament before an executive is formed. Mr Martin McGuinness, who liaises on behalf of Sinn Fein with the decommissioning body, said there was "not the remotest possibility" of the IRA handing over any of its weapons ahead of the establishment of the executive.
"In my view there isn't even the remotest possibility of the IRA responding to this unilateral demand from the leader of the Ulster Unionist Party which amounts to. . . a demand for the surrender of the IRA," Mr McGuinness told BBC 1's On the Record programme. Responsibility for decommissioning did not just rest with Sinn Fein, he added. "The two governments and Senator George Mitchell . . . made the responsibility for bringing about decommissioning, or attempting to bring it about within two years, the responsibility of all the participants.
"The difficulty we have is that one of those participants, the Ulster Unionist Party, has chosen unilaterally to decide how the decommissioning issue should be resolved . . . and they have effectively attempted to turn everybody else against the agreement. We can't allow that to happen," he added.
Meanwhile, a Northern Ireland Office spokesman said the British government and the Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, would continue to work with the political parties to try to have arrangements in place for devolution and the formation of an executive by March 10th. "We are entering a crucial phase, and it is not helpful to exaggerate difficulties. We must concentrate on the steps ahead, and take them one at a time," the spokesman added.
