The Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) is considering publishing an early report on whether the IRA was responsible for the recent foiled abduction of republican dissident Bobby Tohill.Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor, reports.
The IMC was not due to publish its first detailed report on overall paramilitary violence until early May but could now bring forward its finding on the Tohill attack because of the political upheaval it has caused.
It can recommend sanctions against Sinn Féin should it find the IRA responsible.
The PSNI chief constable Mr Hugh Orde and the British and Irish governments have insisted that the IRA planned to murder Mr Tohill when it attacked him in Belfast over two weeks ago.
The IRA leadership said it did not authorise the attack.
The fallout from the Tohill incident has the potential to collapse the review of the Belfast Agreement. Already Mr David Trimble has withdrawn his Ulster Unionist Party from the review while the DUP has called for Sinn Féin to be thrown out.
Four people are before the courts in connection with the incident. The IMC confirmed yesterday it was examining how it could report on the matter without prejudicing these cases.
Mr Joe Brosnan, a former head of the Department of Justice and the Irish Government appointee to the four-member international body, said the IMC was conscious of the balance it must strike.
"We have been set up to do a specific job. We are going to do that job.
" On the other hand we have to be careful not to say anything that would prejudice criminal proceedings," he said.
The chairman of the IMC, Lord Alderdice, added that people must not assume the IMC could not properly address the attack on Mr Tohill because of the cases, although no final decision was made on whether an "ad hoc" report might be produced this month or next.
Lord Alderdice suggested that an early report on Tohill could be justified notwithstanding that the IMC could face criticism for not being equally premature in reporting on alleged loyalist violence including the murder of 21-year-old Catholic James McMahon in Lisburn last November.
"It's clearly a subject that has excited considerable interest given that the two governments have made a specific request in regard to it, and quite a number of parties have made their views known," he added.
The full report examining loyalist and republican violence would appear early in May.
Encapsulating the IMC's remit, Lord Alderdice said: "Our job is to follow the evidence and take it where it leads us."
The IMC could apply a range of penalties including expelling parties in breach of their commitments from the Assembly but there had been doubt as to whether it could operate if the Assembly was in suspension, as at present.
The IMC members, at a press conference in Belfast yesterday, stressed that they had the power to impose penalties or "remedies" irrespective of whether the Assembly was sitting.
The members of the commission indicated they envisaged a very significant and politically important role for the body, in assisting the transition to democratic politics.
Sinn Féin last night said the IMC was outside the terms of the Belfast Agreement, was not independent of the governments, and accused it of ignoring "unionist paramilitary violence".