Senior Ulster Unionist anti-agreement politicians want to place a new precondition on their party's participation in any future Northern Ireland executive.
As well as demanding a start to decommissioning, they want Mr David Trimble to pledge that he will only sit in the Stormont administration if the British government promises to retain the RUC's name. They want to secure this commitment from the leadership at the crucial Ulster Unionist Council meeting in Belfast on Saturday. The motion is the idea of Mr David Burnside, once a close Trimble ally, and is expected to be raised at tonight's meeting of the UUP Executive, where the British government's response to the Patten report on policing is to be discussed.
Meanwhile, Sinn Fein is considering taking legal action against the British government if the Assembly and Executive are suspended this week. Senior party sources said it was "an option we will look at if necessary".
Sinn Fein would argue that the Northern Secretary, Mr Peter Mandelson, is in breach of the Belfast Agreement if he suspended the institutions and reintroduced direct rule. The party would claim that the only relevant date for decommissioning was the May 2000 deadline referred to in the agreement.
The Sinn Fein chairman, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, said yesterday his party was not to blame for the present political situation.
Speaking on the BBC's On the Record programme, he said his party was under extreme pressure to meet the decommissioning deadline in May and remained committed to attempting to achieve that. The threat at the present time were the pro-British unionists and the British government."
Mr David Trimble has said that the only decommissioning the Provisional IRA seems interested in is the decommissioning of the Assembly and Executive. Writing in Sunday Life, he said he wanted Sinn Fein involved in the political process "but not at any price".
The British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, yesterday challenged the various parties of Northern Ireland to decide whether "attachment to symbolism" was more important than the goal of a lasting peace, Luke Holland reports from London.
Speaking at a Labour Party local government conference in Blackpool, Mr Blair said the problems in Northern Ireland "often are the symbols that stand in the way of progress, the symbols of unionists and nationalists. And the issue of decommissioning is one such symbol. There comes a point where you have to decide whether attachment to symbolism is more important than the vision of peace."
He said: "I am not asking anyone to break their word, I am not asking anyone to betray anything that they believe in. I am saying from the depth of my heart that if we let this chance of peace go, if we let fall from our fingers the very thing we have grasped so firmly - the chance and hope of a peaceful future for the children of Northern Ireland - if we do that, we will have failed the people we serve and that would be the biggest betrayal of all."