Ken Maginnis (left) and Martin McGuinness: head to head

TV Debate Between Sinn Fein and Ulster Unionists

The debate, live from Belfast, involved Ken Maginnis, the Ulster Unionist MP for Fermanagh and South Tyrone, and Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein MP for neighbouring Mid Ulster.

It comes as the Government is trying to build on the new IRA ceasefire which began on 20 July. Security officials say there has been a marked absence of violent incidents since the ceasefire, and the army has responded by stepping down its presence on the streets of Northern Ireland.

The Northern Ireland Secretary, Mo Mowlam, will decide at the end of August whether the IRA ceasefire is genuine, so allowing Sinn Fein into all-party peace talks due to resume on 15 September.

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Ms Mowlam held the first talks between a Government minister and Sinn Fein for 18 months when she met the group's leader, Gerry Adams, on 6 August. She used that meeting to push for the earliest posible decommissioning of all paramilitary weapons.

Sinn Fein used a big rally in Belfast on Sunday to appeal to unionists to join it at the negotiating table.

The precise timing of IRA disarmament has been one of the biggest obstacles to all-party talks. Unionists, who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom, have demanded that disarmament be a condition for accepting Sinn Fein into the talks.

Sinn Fein demands that its long-term goal of unifying Ireland be included in the talks. Other issues it wants to tackle include the release of Republican prisoners, equality of treatment of Catholics in the province, and Protestant parades which nationalists regard as provocative.

The unionists are discomfited by the speed with which the Labour Government is moving on Northern Ireland. The previous Conservative government waited more than nine months before holding a meeting with Gerry Adams after the original IRA ceasefire declared in 1994.

There have been two previous similar debates. Ken Maginnis took part in a debate with the Sinn Fein leader, Gerry Adams on the American channel CNN. A debate between Mr Maginnis and Sinn Fein's chairman, Mitchell McLaughlin, was pre-recorded for a BBC Northern Ireland programme - hours before the Docklands bomb ended the previous IRA ceasefire in 1996; it was shown only in a very curtailed form.

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