The Ulster Unionist Party, in the face of mounting local and international pressure, has continued to balk at the proposals in the British-Irish Way Forward document. The UUP leader Mr David Trimble, while still sounding suspicious and sceptical about whether the IRA would disarm if Sinn Fein was accepted into an executive, said nonetheless that he would not reject the proposals "out of hand".
Mr Trimble, who must face the party executive on Friday, briefed his Assembly members yesterday on developments to date. He indicated that he needs stronger assurances on decommissioning if he is to try to sell the proposals to the party.
The former talks chairman, Mr George Mitchell, has added his weight to those encouraging unionists to join Sinn Fein in an executive on the understanding that shortly thereafter the IRA will begin the process of disarmament.
"It would be an immense tragedy were the process to fail now. The governments, the political leaders and the people of Northern Ireland have come too far to let peace slip away," Mr Mitchell said.
Mr Seamus Mallon, the SDLP deputy leader and Deputy First Minister, in an attempt to allay unionist anxieties, said that Sinn Fein could not remain in office if the IRA broke its implied pledge to disarm.
"What counts is that those who default on the terms of the agreement and on the proposals from the two governments will not continue in office," he said. Mr Mallon, in an article in yesterday's unionist News Letter and nationalist Irish News newspapers and on television and radio, maintained the pressure on unionists to accept the declaration.
He said that just as the outside world would not understand unionists rejecting the Way Forward proposals, neither would international opinion and nationalist Ireland "understand, accept or tolerate" republican bad faith on its apparent decommissioning commitment.
Mr Mallon also attempted to address unionist complaints that should the IRA fail to disarm the UUP as well as Sinn Fein would be penalised with the probable suspension of the Belfast Agreement.
He said unionists could not predetermine any review of the agreement. But if the IRA did not disarm, he strongly indicated that Sinn Fein could not be "beneficiaries" of any republican default. He appeared to go guarantor that Sinn Fein rather than the UUP would be penalised in such an eventuality.
"Can anybody imagine circumstances where those who default on the commitments in the Good Friday agreement and the Way Forward - and in the process precipitate a suspension of the workings of all institutions of the agreement - would be beneficiaries of the review process where the SDLP and I as Deputy First Minister would play a central role?"
The SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, said he had had a long telephone conversation with the US President, Mr Clinton, on Monday night when the President asked him how the "concerns" of unionists could be addressed.
President Clinton spoke to the SDLP leader after Mr Trimble asked him to help persuade Mr Hume to ensure that the SDLP would join the UUP in an executive without Sinn Fein if there was no IRA decommissioning. Mr Trimble also urged President Clinton to use his influence with Mr Adams to prompt an IRA statement on decommissioning.
Mr Trimble, in an article in yesterday's Belfast Telegraph, said the suspension of the workings of the agreement rather than the simple expulsion of Sinn Fein if the IRA did not disarm had caused more resentment than almost anything else.
For many people, he added, the British Prime Minister was seeking one concession too many. He warned: "The unionist community has been both conciliatory and patient. Even if that patience is not yet exhausted, it is not inexhaustible."
Meanwhile, the Sinn Fein Assembly member, Mr Gerry Kelly, has deplored Downing Street suggestions that in the absence of IRA decommissioning there would be a review of the prisoner release programme.
He called on the Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, to "categorically state that there will be no unionist-dictated interference in the prisoner release programme". Mr Nigel Dodds, the DUP secretary, said that the Way Forward was "inadequate and toothless" because it did not offer any effective guarantees to unionists. "It is another con job aimed at coercing unionists into taking a step which once taken is irretrievable and irrevocable," he said.
