The family of Mrs Jean McConville, who was murdered and buried in secret by the IRA, remain split over her funeral arrangements, despite days of intense efforts by mediators to resolve the row.
Last night it emerged in Belfast that the Coroner's Office in Dublin has declined to release Mrs McConville's remains until her children reach an agreement on the funeral details.
All but one of her children want her to be buried quietly in a cemetery in Lisburn, 10 miles from Belfast, alongside her ex-soldier husband, rather than beside her daughter, Anne, in Milltown Cemetery, near the republican plot.
However, one of her daughters, Ms Helen McKendry, still prefers the Milltown option, though last night she said she would not allow the dispute to end up in the courts in Dublin.
On Sunday, Ms McKendry's husband, Seamus, said Mrs McConville could not be buried in Lisburn because the grave was full, and because paperwork was missing.
However, Ms McKendry said the authorities had now told the family that a Lisburn funeral is possible if that was the agreed will of all of the dead woman's children.
Mrs McConville's body was found buried in Shelling Hill Beach, near Carlingford, Co Louth, in late August following several searches organised by the Garda dating back to 1999.
The 37-year-old mother of 10 was abducted, beaten and shot in the head by the IRA in 1972 after she went to the aid of a fatally wounded British soldier outside her front door in west Belfast.
Revealing the deep divisions within the family, Ms McKendry said she continued to believe that some of her brothers living in west Belfast had been pressured to opt for a quiet burial.
She said she would now be prepared to accept a Lisburn funeral as long as the cortege travelled on the Falls Road.
"To me it is very important that she is taken onto the Falls Road. But my family don't want that."
The Sinn Féin president, Mr Gerry Adams, said there was "no truth whatsoever" to charges that Sinn Féin or the IRA had put pressure on any member of the McConville family not to bury their mother in Milltown.
He said he had been under the impression that Mrs McConville's funeral Mass would take place in St Peter's Cathedral in west Belfast, not in St Mary's near the city centre, and that the cortege would travel the Falls Road.
"The funeral should be allowed to proceed from wherever they want, through whatever route they want to anywhere that they want. It was the expectation that it was going to come up the Falls," he said.
The McConville family are enduring "a very sad and traumatic time", while republicans have accepted that the family had suffered "an injustice" and needed to find "closure" from a funeral. "This is a very sad part of our history."
