The British government is to delay responding to the International Monitoring Commission's inquiry into the Northern Bank raid for over a week to let tempers cool.
The IMC will blame the IRA for the Northern Bank raid, and warn that Sinn Féin would have been suspended for six months from the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive if the two bodies had been sitting.
The document, prepared by the four-strong independent body headed by former Alliance Party leader Lord John Alderdice, will be released simultaneously in Dublin, London and Belfast at 11 a.m. today.
The Irish Government has repeatedly recommended that sanctions should not be imposed on Sinn Féin on the grounds that exclusion of republicans will create further problems down the road.
In the House of Commons, the Northern Secretary, Mr Paul Murphy, will put off reacting to the report until Monday week at the earliest, British sources told The Irish Times last night.
The delay will help to let tempers recover, the British side hopes, following weeks of bitter condemnation of both the IRA and Sinn Féin by the Irish and British governments and other parties.
However, the IMC's recommendation that the salaries of SF members in the suspended Assembly should be cut will be partially honoured in that existing cuts, imposed after last year's IMC report into the kidnapping of Belfast republican Mr Bobby Tohill and due to expire shortly, will be continued.
Last night, Irish sources said they expected the British government would delay its response to the document for "a couple of days".
Meanwhile, the Government and main Opposition parties combined to support a Dáil motion that criticised Sinn Féin, condemned the IRA and demanded that all political parties support peaceful methods.
The Minister for Justice, Equality and Law Reform, Mr McDowell, said Sinn Féin had repeatedly refused during December's talks to commit itself to peaceful politics.
"That simple proposition was too much to be swallowed," said Mr McDowell, who repeatedly insisted that IRA criminality has continued persistently since 1998 and must now end.
Urging all to renew their efforts, the Minister for Finance, Mr Cowen, said: "If we are to get out of this impasse we must submit ourselves to the will of the people."
However, Sinn Féin TD Mr Caoimhghin Ó Caolain, who was clearly annoyed by the contributions made by other TDs, "absolutely refuted" the allegations of criminality made against Sinn Féin. He asked other parties to state which measures negotiated by Sinn Féin they would now drop.
In Washington, the US President's Special Envoy for Northern Ireland, Dr Mitchell Reiss, said the Bush administration had made "no official decision" about the St Patrick's Day White House party.