The Bloody Sunday Inquiry is to meet the British Ministry of Defence and the RUC behind closed doors as part of deliberations over where former soldiers should testify when called to give evidence, it was announced today.
Inquiry chairman Lord Saville of Newdigate said the tribunal believed it may be assisted in making a ruling on the venue for troops' live testimonies by seeking more information about the security situation.
The announcement came nine days after the tribunal heard submissions on whether the inquiry should stay at its current location at the Guildhall in Derry, or move to England, when it enters the phase of taking soldiers' oral evidence early next year.
Lawyers for the soldiers who opened fire in Derry on January 30 1972 have claimed their clients face a heightened danger of republican murder bids if the venue remains unchanged.
But any move is being resisted by legal representatives of the 13 men killed in the shootings.
Lord Saville said the discussion with security authorities would be held in private "since it will be necessary to involve discussion of security matters that, for obvious reasons, cannot be made public".
He added: "However the tribunal will, of course, make public to the greatest degree possible the outcome of the meeting and will then decide how to proceed."
Earlier the inquiry heard allegations that an Official IRA quartermaster was on the committee of the Derry Civil Rights Association, which organised the march on Bloody Sunday.
Witness Ms Mavis Hyde, who was an activist in the Derry CRA branch, said she was unaware of the paramilitary credentials of Reg Tester, whom she claimed did not attend many of the meetings, possibly because he worked shifts.
She also alleged another committee member was a man - who is seeking anonymity at the hearings - a measure currently being pursued by several witnesses, among them five other Official IRA men.
The same man, whose name had been blanked out of her statement, was later described getting on to the platform at the end of the march with the then Northern MP Miss Bernadette Devlin and Civil Rights Association officer Mr Kevin McCorry.
Asked by Mr Edwin Glasgow QC, acting for most of the soldiers, if the man had ever advised the committee or expressed a view about whether there should be paramilitary activity on the day of the march, Ms Hyde replied: "No, because he would not have known that, I would not have thought."
Another Derry CRA activist at the time told the inquiry that Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mr John Hume viewed the Association as "politically dangerous" in the early 1970s.
Mr Michael Havord claimed Social Democratic and Labour Party leader Mr Hume had his own civil rights organisation in the city at the time, which had the potential to divert support away from the CRA.
Mr Havord, an Englishman and ex-Royal Navy sailor who settled in Derry in 1959, said during the early planning for the march in December 1971, it was feared the demonstration would attract only 200 to 300 marchers, because Derry had two civil rights movements.
Mr Hume did not attend the march and it has been alleged at the inquiry that he withdrew support for it after trouble flared at a demonstration on Magilligan Strand, Co Derry, a week earlier.
Mr Havord claimed the central Northern Ireland Civil Rights Association suggested having Mr Hume as a speaker, but that was resisted by the Derry branch.
PA