The withdrawal of £1.2 million support for a loyalist conflict transformation initiative will be automatic in the absence of a beginning to UDA decommissioning, SDLP sources said yesterday.
Social Development Minister Margaret Ritchie's 60-day deadline for UDA movement on weapons ran out at midnight last night. SDLP sources said the organisation had not made a significant start to decommissioning despite engaging with Gen John de Chastelain's commission.
Ms Ritchie, currently on Executive business in Brussels, did not issue any statement relating to the UDA yesterday. But party sources indicated that she had made clear her position.
The Irish Times was told that the Minister's next statement on the issue, expected next week, would not declare the removal of funding but would detail which other community projects aimed at alleviating poverty in loyalist communities would benefit from the redirected money.
Along with the Alliance Party, the SDLP has expressed anger at the intervention by Northern Secretary Shaun Woodward who claimed that the UDA had made meaningful contact with the decommissioning body. Sources indicated that Mr Woodward had tried to press the Minister into compromising and to accept the contacts between the de Chastelain commission and the UDA as sufficient to guarantee continued funding of the conflict transformation initiative.
Northern Ireland Office junior minister Paul Goggins rejected this yesterday, claiming that the decision was Ms Ritchie's and hers alone.
There was no comment from the UDA or from the Ulster Political Research Group, whose spokesman Frankie Gallagher said earlier this week that the withdrawal of funding would not hasten UDA decommissioning.
It is rumoured that loyalists could make an announcement on decommissioning to coincide with Remembrance Sunday on November 11th.