FORMER US Senator George Mitchell will resume the chair at the Northern inter party talks today for a renewed session on arms decommissioning, as the SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, calls for a new sense of urgency to be injected into the process.
The debate on decommissioning could be spun out over several weeks and it will soon become apparent whether or not the parties are likely to move on to core issues before Christmas.
The UUP leader, Mr David Trimble, has already warned that in the new year the parties will begin to devote their main attention to the British general election campaign and the opportunity for real negotiations will fade.
Mr Hume said at the weekend that the introduction of a timeframe, of perhaps six months, might facilitate progress on the agenda.
"We could set a target but obviously if the talks were going well at the end of the six months they would continue on," he said yesterday. "We should get down as soon as possible to the serious matters which the talks are really about the three sets of relationships and getting agreement on a system of government."
Mr Hume added: "Given that the talks are being chaired by three very internationally respected people, it is only reasonable that we wouldn't expect them to hang around for ever and we would be able to give them a timetable as well."
Mr Hume acknowledged, as Alliance leader Lord Alderdice said yesterday, that the legislation setting up the talks had already envisaged a timetable of a year initially, with an extension possible by agreement. But almost six months have passed and the talks have only begun working last week to an agreed agenda for the opening plenary session.
Senator Mitchell has been in the US, for the past month and his return may signal an effort to advance the pace of the discussions, particularly as his own Mitchell Report is central to the argument on decommissioning.
Mr Hume, speaking on BBC Radio Ulster at the weekend, also argued that Sinn Fein should be allowed to enter the talks after an IRA ceasefire and without any further preconditions.
However, the UUP policy - as outlined by Mr Trimble - is that all the parties, including the SDLP and the two governments, should accept that Sinn Fein has precluded itself from participating in the talks, and should determine to make progress in the absence of republican representatives.