ASIDE from signs of a major division of opinion within the IRA and Sinn Fein over the renewal of the former's military campaign, it appears the IRA inside Northern Ireland does not want to see loyalists re enter the conflict.
There may be a geographical split in the republicans movement over the future conduct of the renewed "armed struggle", with the southern IRA wanting the conflict extended into Northern Ireland and the Northern republicans opposing this.
Sinn Fein and IRA members living in Northern Ireland bore the brunt of the loyalist campaign of assassinations starting in the late 1980s and escalating into the blood letting of late 1993 when both sides committed atrocities.
In the last 20 years, the worst of these sprang from this conflict between the IRA and the loyalist organisations, the Ulster Defence Association and the Ulster Volunteer Force.
The 10 Protestants and the IRA bomber killed on the Shankill Road in October 1993 were the "collateral damage" resulting from an IRA attempt to kill UDA members who used offices above the fish shop where the bomb exploded.
The UDA responded with a gun attack which killed seven people at the Rising Sun bar in Greysteel, Co Derry.
In June 1994 the Irish National Liberation Army, the republican splinter group, shot dead three UVF members on the Shankill Road and this led to the killing of six Catholics in another bar at Loughinisland, Co Down.
The four years in Northern Ireland preceding the IRA and loyalist paramilitary ceasefires were among the worst for sectarian violence in the 25 years of conflict.
Loyalist killings rose as the IRA expanded its campaign within Northern Ireland and in Britain.
Fears grew that the IRA was forcing the British government to the negotiating table.
In 1993 and 1994, when the IRA launched its large bomb attacks in London, loyalist killings in the North overtook republican killings for the first time in almost 20 years.
In 1993, loyalists carried out 47 of the year's 77 killings.
In 1994, before the ceasefires were called, 34 of the 56 killings were carried out by loyalists.
In 1994, the UVF had begun, for the first time since the mid 1970s, to organise and carry out bomb attacks in Dublin. One IRA man was killed in the bomb and gun attack on the Widow Scallans public house in May 1994.
The bomb failed to explode. Garda examination of the device showed it could have killed dozens of people had it not failed to detonate.
Martin Doherty, the IRA man shot dead in the Widow Scallans pub, and a Sinn Fein Donegal county councillor, Eddie Fullerton, shot dead in 1990, are the only republicans to have been killed by loyalists in the South in two decades.
By contrast, republicans in Belfast have their houses fortified with security doors and windows and metal grilles to offset the threat of loyalist assassination.
According to republican sources there is limited desire for a renewed IRA campaign, inside Northern Ireland, particularly among re pub Ii cans in Belfast and areas of mid Ulster where republicans were frequently attacked by loyalists.
One Belfast republican said the IRA elements most strongly opposed to renewing the ceasefire were living in Border areas and in the Republic who never had the war on their doorstep".
This sentiment coincides with the view of senior security sources that the strongest support for ending the IRA ceasefire was in the Border areas from south Armagh, Monaghan and Fermanagh where there has been almost no loyalist paramilitary activity in 20 years.