YESTERDAY'S plenary session of the multi-party talks at Stormont was adjourned after an acrimonious 2 1/2-hour discussion on decommissioning, described by an Alliance Party representative as "one of the most depressing sessions of the talks thus far".
The session was adjourned until Tuesday to allow further bilateral discussions between the parties, the governments and the independent chairman. But talks sources said the divisions over decommissioning appeared to have deepened and hardened.
The Alliance deputy leader, Mr Seamus Close, speaking after the adjournment, said: "To our frustration and dismay it appears that the gulf over decommissioning is now even wider than it was before Christmas ... What is most evident after today's meeting is that the political will which the parties need to demonstrate to tackle this problem is simply not there."
Mr Nigel Dodds, of the DUP, said the talks would not go anywhere "so long as Dublin and the SDLP continue to keep the door open for Sinn Fein to come into talks on the basis of another bogus and spurious ceasefire".
Mr Reg Empey, of the UP said the fundamental issue is whether or not Sinn Fein/IRA is injected into this process without any genuine commitment to exclusively peaceful means. That has been, and remains, the big problem".
The SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, said: "We should all be concentrating our minds, not on side issues like decommissioning, but on reaching agreement on how we live together and how we govern one another." That was fundamental to removing the gun for good from Irish politics.
Mr Close said the session heard: "recrimination after recrimination". There had been further retrenchment, and the UUP appeared to have "binned' the International Body's report on decommissioning.
With the parties apparently drawing further apart on the issue, attention will turn to the pre Christmas suggestion by the independent chairman, Mr George Mitchell, that he and his two co-chairmen may consider advancing their own proposals for a solution to the decommissioning problem.