Hume: optimistic

"Blair has opened door to peace"

"Possibility of IRA ceasefire"

Ministers May Scrap Sinn Fein Talks

The Security Minister Adam Ingram indicated continuing the dialogue had to be looked at again in the light of what he said was a clear targeting of the army and police.

Two meetings between a Sinn Fein delegation led by chief negotiator Martin McGuinness, MP, and officials have taken place. After the second meeting last week the Northern Ireland Office said a third had been agreed provisionally but was "subject to events on the ground".

Mr Ingram said there was no justification for the bomb left in the Poleglass area and how the bomb impacted on the contacts with Sinn Fein was being analysed at the moment.

"These things have to be assessed and we are still assessing the impact of this. We are still looking at the full information coming forward, as to what the IRA are saying about it, what Sinn Fein are saying about it and, of course, our own security assessment of it," he said.

The Irish government is also considering cutting contact with the republicans because of the bomb, said Dublin premier John Bruton.

The chairman of the multi-party talks in Northern Ireland, the American Senator George Mitchell, is meeting the Prime Minister Tony Blair ahead of a resumption of multi-party talks on the future of Northern Ireland tomorrow.

The Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams is to lead a delegation to Stormont, despite the party's exclusion from the talks.

"We have a right to be involved on the same basis as everybody else," he said. Mr Adams today accused the Government of double standards by allowing loyalist parties to remain in the talks - even thought the loyalist paramilitaries they represent had been involved in acts of violence - but excluding Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA.

For his part, the SDLP leader John Hume was optimistic about the prospects for Sinn Fein's inclusion in the talks.

He told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "Tony Blair has really opened the door to achieving peace by the dialogue officials are engaged in. I have no doubt that if the dialogue is taken seriously it will lead to a complete end to violence and talks taking place in a completely peaceful atmosphere."

"The pre-condition that no one wants to change is that there should be an unequivocal restoration of the IRA ceasefire. I think there is every possibility of those conditions now being met," he insisted. "I believe there is a real opportunity now to bring to an end the IRA campaign and to get real dialogue going."

Meeting behind closed doors

During the conference, organised by President Nelson Mandela, representatives of the main Ulster parties were told how South Africa handled its largely non-violent transition from white-minority to black-majority rule.

A cloak of secrecy was thrown around the conference venue and no details have been released of the meetings. Both the organisers and the Ulster politicians have insisted that the get-together was not a form of secret negotiation, simply an explanation of the South African experience.

Among those who took part in the conference were a Loyalist delegation headed by Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble, Democratic Unionist deputy leader Peter Robinson, and a four-strong Sinn Fein delegation led by Martin McGuinness.

The SDLP and the loyalist political parties as well as the Alliance Party attended the meeting.