Out of evil may come good. The killing of Mr Terence En right, married to a niece of Mr Gerry Adams and employed in a club owned by a sister-in-law of Mr David Ervine, created a coalition of grief in Belfast yesterday.

Mr Adams was visibly upset when he met reporters in the early afternoon. There was equally genuine sadness in Mr Ervine's voice as he gave his reaction to the incident on radio.

One suspects the killers and those directing them may have derived particular satisfaction from inflicting hurt on the two men they most revile in Northern life.

The killing highlighted the real issue in the North today - not a united Ireland versus the British link but change through political activity versus the law of the jungle.

The same weekend that the killers struck, officials of both governments were also at work in Belfast, meeting representatives of the political parties and trying to hammer out a consensus for today's resumption of the Stormont talks.

The situation was changing by the hour, and even those closest to the action were unsure how events would pan out when the parties gathered at Castle Buildings after a long and unusually bloody Christmas recess.

The basic message about today's deliberations was not to expect too much too soon. A meeting of British and Irish officials is tentatively arranged for first thing this morning to discuss the day's proceedings.

The first formal event is a meeting of the business committee of the talks, which consists of two representatives of each of the participating groups. This will probably be taken up with the reservations of the Ulster Unionist Party about the proposal to move the talks to London for three days from January 26th.

The UUP has been uneasy about this, citing the cost and the fact that there will be little progress to report to the news-hungry media. A three-day session in Dublin is planned for mid-February.

It was intended that this afternoon would be given over to discussion of Strand One, the internal governance of Northern Ireland. Discussion of Strand Two, North-South relations, was scheduled for tomorrow, followed by a meeting of the confidence-building sub-committee.

The decommissioning sub-committee is scheduled to meet on Wednesday morning, but it may be postponed to allow the politicians to at tend at Westminster for Northern Ireland Questions.

If the weekend discussions had gone well, there might have been a proposal to suspend the Strand One discussion in favour of a full plenary session on heads of agreement in a possible settlement. A more likely scenario, however, is that there will be a series of bilaterals. Formal Strand One and Two discussions may still go ahead, because the smaller parties tend to get sidelined and isolated during bilaterals.

There were strong indications that the weekend discussions had not been smooth. The Daily Telegraph report that a draft British proposal had made North-South bodies subject to a British-Irish "council of the isles" aroused deep suspicion in nationalist and republican ranks.

Republicans were concerned that the British government had lost its nerve in the face of recent loyalist violence, the so-called "Orange card". Even moderate nationalists could not accept emasculated North-South bodies which would be the footstool of a council representing assemblies which, in the case of Scotland and Wales, had not even been set up yet.

A typical reaction on the moderate nationalist side came from Mr Tommie Gallagher, SDLP representative in Fermanagh-South Tyrone. "Such an arrangement would not get the support of nationalists. It is not enough to acknowledge that two traditions exist here: any agreement will have to deliver political and institutional expression to both unionist and nationalist identities," he told The Irish Times.

The republican bottom line is North-South bodies with executive powers independent of any council of the two islands. Sources close to republican thinking said: "The Irish Government has got to make sure it doesn't give way on commitments which led to the IRA ceasefire."

Nationalists of every hue are concerned that there may be a move away from the Framework Document proposals. There is also a row building up over the distribution of documents, with nationalists alleging that unionists were made aware of the contents of a British draft before anyone else.

Political sources in Dublin were more reassuring. The British were willing to live with North-South bodies with executive powers. Unionists would have to swallow that, just as republicans would have to accept an assembly.

The great phrase of the weekend was "possible propositions" which were being put to the parties by civil servants.

Ideally there would be equal amounts of comfort and pain for all parties in the heads of agreement: not so much parity of esteem as "parity of pain".

Dublin sources played down the leaked draft which they said was "a very old one". There had been many different versions. "Ourselves and the British have been running off different texts."

They claimed there was no serious disagreement between the two governments on the heads of agreement, merely differences in the language used arising from the fact that Dublin talks mainly to nationalists and Britain deals mostly with unionists.

The expectation now is that no heads-of-agreement paper will be presented until next week. The two governments are trying to bring the parties to the point where they say: "We can live with this package."

Although this point is still a considerable distance away, there is a sense that all the parties now know what the necessary elements are for a solution. The urgency with which Dublin is treating the situation is reflected in the decision by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, to travel to Belfast early this morning to attend the meeting of the business committee, although he was originally not scheduled to arrive until the afternoon. Mr Blair's Irish education continues.