Sinn Fein has warned of a "crisis" in the peace process after the Ulster Unionist Party made its strongest assertion to date that there can be no Assembly shadow executive until the IRA begins decommissioning.
A UUP Assembly member, Mr Reg Empey, insisted yesterday that some prior disarmament was the "bottom line" for his party.
Asked if this meant that the UUP leader, Mr David Trimble, would resign rather than backtrack on the disarmament question, Mr Empey said: "People can interpret our position as they like."
The public expression of the discord between the UUP and Sinn Fein is understood to be causing some alarm in Dublin and London. The Government's view is that there is no link in the Belfast Agreement between the formation of an executive and disarmament.
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, indicated the Government's interpretation of the agreement on decommissioning during an interview last night on the new television station, tv3. There was no requirement for decommissioning for two years, he said.
The issue will be at the top of the agenda when Mr Trimble meets Mr Ahern in Dublin on Wednesday.
Mr Empey and Sinn Fein's Assembly member for North Belfast, Mr Gerry Kelly, yesterday set the tone for what could be a very serious brinkmanship battle between the two sides that could threaten the future of the Assembly.
Mr Empey told The Irish Times that the unionist community could only be led "a certain distance". Mr Trimble had taken many risks for peace, but Sinn Fein in an executive without some disarmament was a risk too far. "There are certain things that are not possible, and this is one of them," he added. Mr Kelly, a former IRA prisoner, said that unionists were "generating unrealisable expectations" that decommissioning was about to happen.
"The concentration by some unionists on the issue of decommissioning to the exclusion of everything else is causing a crisis at the centre of the peace process," he added. "Sinn Fein has gone as far as it can go. Indeed many republicans think Sinn Fein has gone too far in recent weeks."
Mr Kelly said that Sinn Fein would honour its commitment to the Belfast Agreement, which includes a pledge to influence the IRA to hand over weapons by May 2000.
It was a commitment repeated on Saturday by Mr Martin McGuinness, who is liaising on behalf of Sinn Fein with the Decommissioning Commission.
An SDLP party spokesman said: "Everyone wants decommissioning to happen, but it is not a precondition for government."
Mr David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party, which is linked to the UVF, told RTE Radio that he did not believe Mr Trimble would resign on the issue. The Belfast Agreement did not link the executive to disarmament.
