The Independent Monitoring Commission is in serious difficulty even before it starts work – with the SDLP describing it as "scrambled" and Sinn Féin refusing to cooperate with the body.
Ulster Unionist rebels such as Jeffrey Donaldson and David Burnside also have voiced their disapproval of the commission set-up for different reasons. They say they believe it would lack teeth.
There had been speculation that the commission would be unveiled today but it will now be the end of this week or the beginning of next week before details are released.
The Westminster parliament is due to return to business on Monday and therefore the draft legislation on the monitoring commission may come before the Commons later next week.
When the commission is fin-ally announced its role will be altered to address unionist concerns about the Irish government having an influence in strand one – assembly issues.
The commissioners would of course be independent of the governments but it is understood that where there is spec-ifically a strand one issue the Irish commissioner would not have an input and, according to reliable sources, "sensitivity" would be shown.
It should be pointed out, however, that under the April agreement between the two governments the commission would have a general responsibility regarding the working of the institutions, which would include north/south relations.
At a press conference in Bel-fast SDLP leader Mark Durkan was asked about altering Dub-lin's participation in the commission. He bluntly said there were a number of problems about the proposals for the independent monitoring body.
Mr Durkan said that in the negotiations at Hillsborough and elsewhere the SDLP had pointed out to the British and Irish governments that there were serious flaws in their proposals and predicted the argument that has emerged about the question of a Dublin role in strand one political issues.
"We counselled a much better approach. As far as we were concerned if there was to be an independent monitoring body its remit should have stayed confined to what it was initially meant to be... concentrating on the hardware and hard men issues – demilitarisation and de-paramilitarisation," he said.
"It should be the implementation group of all the parties and both governments who should receive reports from the independent monitoring body to oversee that progress was taking place from the front it was looking at.
"But also the implementation group would deal with any political problems that arose, whether in the assembly, in relation to north/south matters, or default about other matters such as human rights and equality.
"We offered the governments and the parties this much more sensible solution-based way of overseeing the implementation of the declaration and being able to deal with any problems that arose in a constructive and effective basis."
Mr Durkan said that "unfortunately the governments came up with a much more scrambled proposal and now we have a serious difficulty".
Meanwhile, Sinn Féin remains strongly opposed to the est-ablishment of any monitoring commission and argues that this is outside the terms of the Good Friday Agreement.
Republicans say they believe that the commission is being set up simply as another sop to unionists.
Last night (Monday) a Sinn Féin spokes-person said that the party would not be cooperating with this commission.
Ulster Unionist MP Jeffrey Donaldson said that even with changes to the role of the Irish government the commission would lack teeth. Another Ulster Unionist rebel MP, David Burnside, said he did not believe that such a body would have the guts and the political will to put Sinn Féin out of an executive. And within the unionist pro-agreement camp Mid Ulster representative Billy Armstrong said he cautiously welcomed press reports that the legislation setting up the paramilitary ceasefire monitoring body would ex-clude the Irish representative from involvement in the internal affairs of Northern Ireland.
Yesterday Senator George Mitchell had meetings in Belfast with Mr Durkan, UUP leader David Trimble and Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams.
Senator Mitchell noted that society in Northern Ireland had made great strides forward. At the same time he said that transition to a stable, peaceful, democratic society would not be easy.
"You may recall on April 10 1998, when I announced the agreement I said it was a historic step, which it was," Senator Mitchell said.
"I also said on that day that by itself the agreement would not provide nor guarantee a sustainable peace and political stability.
"Rather it made those things available and there would be difficult decisions and setbacks in the future, as there have been," he added.
"But I am confident that the vast majority of the people of Northern Ireland and the political leaders want to see this process through and I hope that they will do so."
