THE SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, has gone over the head of the Northern Ireland Secretary-by seeking an immediate meeting with the British Prime Minister to discuss the crisis in the North. The meeting is expected to take place within two or three days.
SDLP sources said the issue was not one of confidence, or the lack of it, in Dr Mo Mowlam "but the need for the nationalist community to establish that it can have confidence in the British government as a whole".
The SDLP delegation, party sources said, would be "leaving the Prime Minister in no doubt ash to the level of anger in the nationalist community at this time and looking for the British government to show leadership in the run-up to next weekend's controversial marches, principally in Derry and on Belfast's Ormeau Road".
Dr Mowlam spent much of yesterday playing down the importance of a leaked Northern Ireland Office document on the Drumcree Orange parade. She rejected suggestions that the document proved "the British government had made up its mind at least two weeks in advance to force the march down the Garvaghy Road in Portadown.
She was fully backed last night by Mr Blair as the British government ordered an inquiry into what authoritative sources called "a highly malicious leak".
Apart from the belief that the leak was intended to undermine Dr Mowlam's personal position, ministers and officials were alarmed by the implications for the future confidentiality of the conduct of its Northern Ireland business.
The leak also sealed the first serious challenge to the new Labour government, with Dr Mowlam forced on to the defensive as politicians and commentators assessed the damage to her credibility with Northern nationalists resulting from the decision to force through the Orange parade against residents' objections.
Backing Dr Mowlam's claim "that the leaked June 20th document was never endorsed by her, sources last night told The Irish Times that a subsequent paper, drafted by the same official, listed five options, which specifically included the possibility of a total ban on the Orange parade. It was made clear that the RUC Chief Constable, Mr Ronnie Flanagan, would have had Dr Mowlam's backing for a ban had that been 'his final decision.
Reports of serious disagreement between Dr Mowlam and Mr Flanagan were dismissed. At the same time it was acknowledged that "there may have been differences of emphasis" as they weighed the various options before them. The implication was that Dr Mowlam was the more inclined of the two to consider a ban, while the sources said "an extreme interpretation either way would be unfair to both of them".
In another development in the worsening situation yesterday, the Irish National Liberation Army threatened that if any more "loyalist marches" were forced through nationalist communities, members of the Orange Order and related institutions would be "made accountable".
The INLA said it had been carrying out gun and grenade attacks "in defence of besieged nationalist communities" since last Sunday evening. These had resulted in "a number of RUC and British army casualties".
In a development suggesting the ceasefire by the Combined Loyalist Military Command was approaching its final and formal end, members of the UDA and the UVF were filmed by UTV "one patrol" in Wood vale, in the Shankill area of Belfast.
In a separate development yesterday, the parties in the Stormont talks agreed to vote on the Anglo-Irish decommissioning document on July 23rd.