The SDLP leadership emerged from more than an hour of talks with the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, at Downing Street yesterday, promising not to let decommissioning destroy the Belfast Agreement.
But the party leader, Mr John Hume, repeated his call for the IRA to make a public gesture on decommissioning. His call comes as concern grows in London and Dublin ahead of the October 31st deadline for agreement on the North-South Council and the establishment of the shadow executive.
Mr Hume said it might help if the IRA were to make "certain gestures", such as handing over some Semtex to the International Commission on Decommissioning. On the deadline, he said: "I think that the deadline is something that we should all respect and work to respect . . . we are working very hard to respect that deadline in our dialogue with other parties in relation to the implementation of the agreement."
With Mr Blair due to hold talks with the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, in Austria at the weekend, Downing Street said there was a "determination" to resolve the issue but "clearly there are difficulties".
The Deputy First Minister, Mr Seamus Mallon, was "very hopeful" the deadline for deciding on the implementation bodies for the North-South council could be met and decommissioning would be "bypassed". He acknowledged Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionists had "political difficulties" but he said "sooner or later" all parties must come to the table with the detail of implementing the agreement ironed out.
In a speech in Dublin the SDLP Assembly Member, Ms Brid Rodgers, criticised the Ulster Unionists over decommissioning. She said: "Their claim that there must first be a start to decommissioning is false and amounts to an attempt to rewrite the agreement."