DELEGATES to the multi-party talks at Stormont have finally begun addressing the decommissioning issue in round-table negotiations, bolstered by growing confidence that the loyalist paramilitary ceasefire will hold.
Four months after the talks began and following Monday's marathon session when the SDLP and the Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) hammered out a deal on how progress might be made, the parties yesterday began confronting the vexed issue of paramilitary disarmament.
All the parties, except the DUP and Mr Robert McCartney's UK Unionist Party, signed up to the five-point draft agenda thrashed out over several weeks by the SDLP and the UUP, and finally agreed early yesterday.
All the parties, including the DUP and the UK Unionists, participated in yesterday's full day of plenary talks. They quickly moved past item one on the draft agenda - introducing that agenda to consider the Mitchell Report on Decommissioning.
This item may occupy the parties and the two governments for some time. Mr Seamus Mallon, SDLP deputy leader, said the talks proceeded "slowly, tediously and with a certain degree of pedantry". The parties may be locked on the issue for up to three weeks, he said. But, in the event of an agreement, how they proceed thereafter will be the next major hurdle to be surmounted.
The DUP and the UK Unionists are deeply suspicious that during this discussion decommissioning effectively will become a "fourth strand" of the talks, as the Irish Government and the SDLP wish.
Mr David Trimble, the UUP leader, is adamant that the issue will be tackled to the satisfaction of unionists. How those conflicting aspirations can be reconciled will be the difficult test for the parties over the coming weeks.
Delegates were buoyed by some political movement, and of growing confidence that the loyalist paramilitary ceasefire will be maintained despite the IRA bombing in Lisburn last week.
The Rev Roy Magee, the Presbyterian minister who helped broker the loyalist ceasefire, was an observer for some of yesterday's session. He later disclosed that he had met the loyalist paramilitaries within the previous 48 hours and was now more hopeful that they would stay their hand.
The political representatives of the loyalist paramilitaries welcomed the move into talks on decommissioning. Mr David Ervine, spokesman for the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP), said yesterday was "a small teetering step" towards progress. Mr David Adams of the Ulster Democratic Party (UDP) said: "We all know there are hard chestnuts to crack, but there is no excuse for walking away from these talks."
SDLP leader, Mr John Home, said matters would be greatly helped by a restored IRA ceasefire. "I certainly hope that that will happen, and that Sinn Fein will come into the talks."
This is the train of events which the DUP and UK Unionists fear may happen. Mr Ian Paisley jnr said that Sinn Fein could not enter talks by the "IRA paying up service to a ceasefire".
Mr Paisley said the DUP would remain at the talks to see how the disarmament issue was eventually handled. Mr McCartney adopted a similar position, although stating he would have no hesitation in leaving the talks if he were to "be associated with something which is to the utter detriment of the pro-Union people".
