Mitchel McLaughlin, Sinn Fein’s chairman, and Martin McGovern, the party’s London representative, came to the Canary Wharf offices of the Independent on Sunday to brief the editorial board on why the deal could and must work.However, the defecting dissidents may yet decide to join other, more militant groups. This was the pattern during the last significant wave of defections from the IRA late in 1997.Those who left then, including the IRA’s quarter-master general, indicated at the time that they would not establish competing organisations. But it emerged within months that they had set up a new group, “Real IRA,” and were intent on carrying on a campaign of violence while the mainstream IRA maintained its ceasefire. It was this group which bombed Omagh, County Tyrone, in August 1998, killing 29 people.Given this history, the security forces will be watching carefully to gauge whether the defectors constitute a new threat.This sign of republican unrest mirrors the situation in the Ulster Unionist Party where, in a far more public way, opposition is being voiced to Mr Trimble’s attempts to win support for the peace plan brokered by former US senator George Mitchell.It emerged yesterday that, after months of relative stagnation, a speedy timetable has been drawn up to try to maintain the recent momentum.Peter Mandelson, the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, announced that the Belfast Assembly would be summoned on 29 November to appoint a new power-sharing executive to include both the UUP and Sinn Fein.

The Devolution Order will be laid before Parliament on 30 November with devolution to take place on 2 December.”With my own eyes I have seen trust grow and flourish over the last weeks,” Mr Mandelson said. “It will take patience and understanding, but those are the precise qualities that have brought us where we are today.”But devolution will only be possible if Mr Trimble wins the endorsement of his party for the plan at a specially convened meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council on Saturday. Until then, he and his opponents will wage what he described as a “short but momentous campaign”.His efforts were not helped when Pat Doherty, Sinn Fein’s vice president, was quoted in the Boston Herald saying the IRA would not disarm Sinn Fein moved swiftly to counter the damage, however. Mr Doherty put out a statement expressing “dismay and deep concern” at the reporting of his remarks and insisted he had not moved from the Sinn Fein position that “decommissioning is an essential part of the peace process”.Decommissioning remains a sensitive issue, but a source said that the IRA and Sinn Fein are already looking at ways to get rid of republican arms. They are even considering the possibility, still unlikely, of pouring concrete over some weapons in front of Canadian General John de Chastelain, who will oversee the process..

LORD ARCHER faces the possibility of criminal charges after he sensationally quit the race to be London mayor last night amid revelations that he asked a friend to lie for him in court. The author was forced to admit that he had asked a friend, Ted Francis, a television producer, to “cover” for him by saying they had dined together at Sambuca, a Chelsea restaurant, on 9 September 1986, as an alibi against tabloid claims that he had slept with Monica Coghlan, a prostitute.
The millionaire insisted the “untruth” had no bearing on his successful libel action in which he won pounds 500,000 from the Daily Star after it alleged he had sex with Ms Coghlan.Lord Archer now claims he was having dinner at the restaurant with a “close female friend” – Andrina Colquhon, 46, who was his personal assistant at the time – and wanted to protect her identity. In a statement, he said: “Of course I should not have asked Ted to cover for me, even though it was beyond question that I was in the restaurant that night; I was simply trying to protect the person I was with.”His decision to stand down was made after an investigation by the News of the World, which is thought to have paid Mr Francis pounds 15,000 for tapes of incriminating telephone conversations he had with Lord Archer.William Hague, the Conservative leader, who learnt of the crisis on Friday night, told Lord Archer his position was untenable. “Conservatives must set the highest standards of integrity in public life,” he said. “Jeffrey Archer has let the party down and there could be no question of him continuing as our candidate.”Anthony Scrivener, a leading QC, said: “If Archer’s friend had given false evidence then he would have been guilty of perjury or possibly conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. Archer could be charged with conspiracy to pervert the course of justice if he knew his friend was lying in his evidence to protect him, which obviously he must have done.”If Archer himself had given evidence that he was with this friend having dinner when he wasn’t he would have beenguilty of perjury. The penalty for this is 18 months to four years.”Anything to do with perjury in court is treated very seriously by the police because the very edifice of justice depends on people telling the truth.”After a week in which the chaos surrounding Labour’s selection of a candidate for London mayor has dominated the news, it is now the Tories’ turn to be in turmoil.

Lord Archer’s decision to resign – made 11 hours after he learnt his secret was out – has sent the party scurrying to find a replacement.An emergency meeting of the party’s special mayoral selection panel will be held at Conservative Central Office in London today. It will decide whether the party has to re-open nominations for a candidate for mayor or automatically hand the nomination to the former transport minister Steven Norris, who was heavily defeated by Lord Archer when the question was put to London Conservatives this year. Mr Hague is said to have “not yet come to a view” on the matter.Lord Archer’s resignation was the nightmare scenario that the Tories were desperate to avoid. He had already come under attack for his share dealing in Anglia TV in 1994.But on 11am on Friday, the News of the World’s editor Phil Hall and a colleague visited the Tory peer at his penthouse on Albert Embankment, London, for a 20-minute meeting, described by Nadhim Zahawi, director of Lord Archer’s campaign, as “quite civil”.

Lord Archer said last night he was pulling out of the contest to spare his family and the Tory party “six months of sustained attack”. His wife, Lady Archer, is said to “support” his decision.As Lord Archer quit, Labour seized the opportunity to further deflect attention away from its internal problems, saying “sleaze” had come back to haunt the Tories.. Sion Jenkins, the former deputy headmaster jailed for life last year for the brutal murder of his teenage foster daughter Billie-Jo, lost his appeal against conviction today. Sion Jenkins, the former deputy headmaster jailed for life last year for the brutal murder of his teenage foster daughter Billie-Jo, lost his appeal against conviction today.

The Court of Appeal in London upheld a jury’s verdict that it was Jenkins, 41, who bludgeoned the 13-year-old to death with a metal tent spike as she was painting patio doors at the rear of the family’s home in Lower Park Road, Hastings, East Sussex.
Mr Justice Gage and the Lewes Crown Court jury had heard that about 150 microscopic blood spots found on his clothing could only have resulted from Jenkins being close to the girl as she was being struck.
Crown experts said Billie-Jo must have died during the brutal attack and would not have still been alive 15 minutes later, when Jenkins claimed to have “discovered” her body after returning from a shopping trip with two of his four natural daughters.
His appeal hinged on fresh evidence of tests said to show that the blood spots could have come from the dying teenager’s breath as he crouched over her.. A police force today launched a campaign to stop people clogging up the 999 emergency system with time-wasting calls. A police force today launched a campaign to stop people clogging up the 999 emergency system with time-wasting calls.

South Yorkshire Police say they are receiving an increasing number of inappropriate calls which take up vital time when life-or-death emergencies need to be dealt with.
Among the more bizarre calls the force has received are:
A man who rang to say two squirrels were fighting in his back garden;
A couple who had handcuffed themselves together for a joke and then lost the key;
A woman who dialled 999 because she had a problem with her knitting;
A woman driving on the M1 who rang on her mobile phone to find out the time;
And a man who ask if the police could deal with the birds singing on his roof because he could not get any sleep.
Superintendent Graham Cassidy, head of the force’s communications department, said: “It’s mind-boggling how anybody could think we could assist with a problem with knitting or how anybody driving down the M1 could phone to ask the time.
“The 999 service is for real emergencies.