On the eve of the Ulster Unionist Party's annual general meeting, Mr David Trimble said last night he will press for an immediate review of the Northern peace talks when they restart on Monday. Announcing his plans to call for a plenary review, the party leader said he would be asking why there had not been progress on decommissioning.
Sinn Fein has said, meanwhile, that its ardchomhairle will meet today to decide whether to return to the talks on Monday.
The meeting is widely regarded as a formality as no one seriously believes the party plans to continue its boycott.
"I want to see Sinn Fein back at the talks sooner rather than later," Mr Gerry Adams said yesterday. "There is an unprecedented interest in securing peace in Ireland.
"We have now a trinity of national leaders - in Ireland, Britain and the US - focused at a critical stage in the talks process. Sinn Fein will approach the next leg of the talks in a positive and constructive way."
The SDLP has said that nationalists should not fear the creation of a Northern assembly. The party's chairman, Mr Jonathan Stephenson, condemned "republican scare-mongering that a `new Stormont' was on the cards".
It was a "complete and utter deliberate distortion" that the SDLP would support a return to a "discredited and outdated system of majoritarian government", he said.
The party supported a powersharing body which was different even to the one contained in the 1973 Sunningdale Agreement because it would be organically linked to powerful North/South bodies.
Meanwhile, the Rev Ian Paisley has refused a request from the Ulster Democratic Party leader, Mr Gary McMichael, for a meeting. He returned a letter asking for the meeting unopened and dismissed the request as a publicity stunt.
DUP supporters clashed with fringe loyalists who attempted to disrupt their anti-peace process rally in Lisburn, Co Antrim, on Thursday. Dr Paisley accused the fringe loyalists of trying to hijack the meeting.
In Derry, British army bomb disposal experts yesterday defused a 5lb bomb left by two masked men in the Shipquay Place branch of the Northern Bank. The alert started when two men wearing balaclavas threw a hold-all containing the device into the bank's customer waiting area just before 10 a.m.
One of the men shouted: "It's a bomb, don't touch it" before they ran out of the bank and through the city centre.
Minutes later, a telephone warning was received from a caller who claimed to represent the Continuity IRA.
Dozens of shops and offices were evacuated before the area was reopened to the public four hours later.
More than a dozen LVF prisoners are still being questioned at Castlereagh holding centre by police about the murder of fellow inmate David Keys. Investigations continue despite an LVF threat directed at Maze Prison staff.