Conservative leader David Cameron is to raise with British prime minister Tony Blair widespread concerns about the proposed rules for the operation of state-financed Community Restorative Justice (CRJ) schemes in Northern Ireland.
This was confirmed last night after yesterday's first meeting between Mr Cameron and SDLP leader Mark Durkan at Westminster.
Mr Durkan told The Irish Times that the Tory leader shared his concern about the lack of political progress in the North and said that he would reflect specific concerns about emergent plans for regulating CRJ schemes directly to Mr Blair.
The SDLP leader said Mr Cameron had questioned him about the government's enthusiasm to act on the issue given varying degrees of doubt and opposition expressed by political parties with the exception of Sinn Féin.
"Basically, he was questioning us as to why government were doing this . . . He couldn't see the political point or merit in fixing up funding and so on for restorative justice in a way that suits Sinn Féin, because of their links with the whole exercise, without Sinn Féin having moved first on policing," Mr Durkan said.
"He [ Mr Cameron] was at a loss to understand just what the government's strategy and tactics are at the moment."
Mr Durkan was speaking after an earlier press briefing for Westminster journalists heard Catherine McCartney, the sister of the murdered Belfast man Robert McCartney, claim that people involved in the cover-up were associated with restorative justice programmes.
Sinéad Commander, the wife of Robert McCartney's friend Jeff Commander - who was badly beaten and forced to leave his home over his co-operation with the PSNI inquiry - told the same briefing that a priest later asked the family if they would accept mediation with local CRJ representatives.
Catherine McCartney, who was also accompanied by her sister Paula, dismissed the idea that co-operation with CRJ schemes in republican communities was "voluntary" and said it seemed to her "that the whole thing has been engineered to maintain paramilitary control".
Ms McCartney also warned that CRJ schemes, as envisaged by the British government, would force working-class Catholics and Protestants into a justice "ghetto".