Dr Mo Mowlam's unprecedented political gamble of meeting senior UDA prisoners in the Maze has paid off after the loyalist inmates gave their political representatives the go-ahead to remain in the talks which resume on Monday.
UDA leaders including the multiple killer Michael Stone and the Shankill loyalist Johnny Adair yesterday authorised the Ulster Democratic Party to continue its participation in the Stormont process. In a statement last night Dr Mowlam welcomed the decision.
The decision, which came about three hours after the Northern Secretary's encounter with the UDA figures at the high-security Maze prison yesterday morning, also serves to strengthen the problematic UDA ceasefire.
Serious doubts, however, hang over the continuation of the UVF ceasefire and consequently over whether its political representatives, the Progressive Unionist Party, will go back to Stormont on Monday.
The UVF is still considering whether to end its ceasefire, according to a senior UVF leader. The paramilitary organisation informed the Government in Dublin last October through an intermediary that it was considering returning to violence, he said.
The UVF complained that the Government was partisan and that it believed it and the British government were following a "republican agenda", the source added.
The PUP initially planned to take its talks decision on Wednesday, but following its meeting with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, that day and yesterday's brief meeting between UVF inmates and Dr Mowlam, the party postponed its executive decision until tomorrow.
Further behind-the-scenes ef forts are expected before tomorrow to try to persuade the PUP to remain at the talks, and to keep the UVF ceasefire intact. In the meantime, Dr Mowlam has cleared the first loyalist hurdle by winning over the UDA prisoners yesterday.
Dr Mowlam met five senior UDA inmates for 50 minutes and afterwards held more informal separate meetings with IRA and UVF prisoners, each lasting ab out 15 minutes. The UVF and IRA prisoners expressed doubts about the process but told her to "keep going", she told a press conference afterwards.
A spokesman said Dr Mowlam indicated she was willing to hold formal meetings with the IRA and UVF prisoners if they issued such a request. So far neither organisation has given any indication of wanting such a meeting.
Dr Mowlam presented the UDA prisoners with a 14-point document outlining her position on the talks and on prisoners. She gave no guarantees about early releases but signalled that if there was movement in the talks there could be movement.
Her first comments to the press conference were to apologise to those relatives of victims of the Troubles who contacted her to complain about her decision to meet the prisoners. She also thanked those relatives of victims who had offered their support.
She was meeting the prisoners because she had a "duty to the people of Northern Ireland to use all the legitimate means in my power to ensure the peace process is taken forward". She was also meeting them because she believed the UDP when it told her earlier this week the situation was serious.
Dr Mowlam described the meeting as "open, useful and constructive". She said there could be no political progress without inclusive talks and hoped all parties would be around the table on Monday. "No one is going to get anything if we don't have a talks process. Talks are the only way forward," she said.
"I came here determined to make my message clear. Talking is the only way forward. We have had frustratingly slow progress, but there is a desire to move forward. The prisoners felt the talks were going nowhere, but I have done my best. The talks are the only way forward and unless they participate in that, nothing but negative events can happen in Northern Ireland."
She shared the frustration of prisoners at the slow pace of the talks and indicated that political progress could bring progress on prisoner releases.
"We recognise that prisoner issues are important to parties on both sides. They, too, need to be resolved, alongside progress on all the other issues, to the satisfaction of the participants in the progress," she said.
The Northern Secretary said she was prepared to look at the question of prisoner releases "in the context of a peaceful and lasting settlement being agreed".
She added: "Let me be clear there will be no significant changes to release arrangements in any other context or for prisoners associated with a paramilitary organisation actively engaged in terrorist activity."
Dr Mowlam said her meeting with UDA, UVF and IRA inmates was not an acknowledgment that, as the paramilitaries argued, they were political prisoners. It was an acknowledgment "that the prisoners' situation here is different, which I think everybody accepts".
Following the meeting, a UDP delegation led by the party leader, Mr Gary McMichael, met the UDA prisoners. He told the media it was not now necessary for the UDP to meet the UDA leadership, that the UDP would be attending the talks.
He said the opportunity must not be squandered. "The message is to seize the opportunity now while it exists, to use this breathing space which has been given to us, to focus our minds on the talks, to make sure that when we reconvene on Monday rapid progress is made.
"Time is running out here," he added. "Unless we bring this to a head, unless we make it clear agreement is possible, unless the will is there on the part of those who have a difficulty in facing up to the reality of a political settlement - specifically the Irish Government and Sinn Fein - then this progress is going to come down to its knees."
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, yesterday paid tribute to Dr Mow lam, saying she was "brave" to take the initiatives she had taken. "It's good to see that Mo Mowlam's efforts are getting somewhere," he said.
He acknowledged that the situation in Northern Ireland was "very tense" but said considerable progress had been made in the talks over the last few months, despite "bumpy periods". There was still "a great opportunity for all of us together to try to look at a way that we can move this process forward".
The Government's policy of releasing paramilitary prisoners on parole for temporary periods would remain, he said. Such releases tended to happen at Christmas, Easter and during the summer, and this system would continue.
