The British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, has been warned that a proposed amnesty for terrorist fugitives or "on the runs" could provoke the next big crisis in the peace process, writes Frank Millar, London Editor.
At his meeting with the Prime Minister at Downing Street yesterday, the Northern Ireland First Minister and Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble, said any move to permit the return of IRA exiles would have "a devastating impact on public confidence" in the Belfast Agreement.
And there are growing indications that the British government will only "draw a line under 30 years of the Troubles" if that applies to members of the security forces as well as to paramilitaries.
Against a continuing furore over the grant of Westminster facilities and allowances to Sinn Féin MPs, one British source has told The Irish Times "to wipe the slate clean for terrorists while pursuing members of the security forces" would represent an unacceptable political cost to Mr Blair.
Official sources insist Mr Blair and the Secretary of State, Dr John Reid, intend to honour commitments jointly made with the Irish Government during last July's Weston Park negotiations as part of the process leading to the re-election of the First and Deputy First Ministers and the first IRA move on decommissioning.
London and Dublin promised to take the necessary steps to lift the threat of prosecution or extradition against persons connected with paramilitary organisations maintaining ceasefires in respect of offences committed before Good Friday 1998, and who would otherwise have benefited from the prisoner release programme established under the Belfast Agreement.
Arrangements in both jurisdictions were meant to be in place by last December, and the end of March is London's new target date for the production of the necessary legislation. Between the promise and production, however, lies what sources describe as "a huge political, as well as legal and technical, problem".
Ministers and officials acknowledge the political problem in simple terms - "to place the proposed arrangements in a context which is politically and morally acceptable".
Whereas it was originally thought possible to deal with this matter on a case-by-case basis, Conservative sources say the government will find it necessary to legislate to cover cases and individuals where evidence which might warrant a prosecution has yet to come to light.
Government insiders do not dispute this, saying: "In effect we would be shutting down the whole chapter, declaring the Troubles at an end . . . To do so in a one-sided way would be ludicrous."
There are implications in all of this, too, for the outcome of inquiries into a number of controversial killings, including those of Mr Pat Finucane, Mrs Rosemary Nelson and Mr Billy Wright, also promised during the Weston Park negotiations.
An international judicial figure is due to decide the form inquiries should take into these and the killings of Lord Justice and Lady Gibson, Chief Supt Harry Breen, Supt Bob Buchanan and Mr Robert Hamill.
However, beyond "the establishment of matters of fact" it is now known that the British government has "grave doubts" about consequent prosecutions.