Northern Ireland's business leaders have appealed to the paramilitaries to give a committment to decommissioning.

The G7 group, which represents business, industry and the unions, said it believed a statement from the paramilitaries indicating that decommissioning would take place, could help the current political impasse.

The group's chairman, Sir George Quigley, told the BBC that nothing could be off-limits in the search for peace.

"Obviously the simplest evidence would be simply a clear unequivocal statement, a pledge, that decommissioning will be undertaken and that it will be completed by the 22nd of May which is the date that everybody seems to regard as relevant and important in context of the Good Friday Agreement itself," he said.

Church appeals

Meanwhile the Catholic Primate and Archbishop of Armagh, Dr Sean Brady, has appealed to the politicians to play their full part in implementing the agreement.

He said: "The high hopes for peace and stability must not be dashed. The great opportunities presented by the work already done must not be lost."

His comments come after weekend calls by Protestant church leaders for the IRA to start decommissioning.

Former Presbyterian moderator Dr John Dunlop said it was not enough that the IRA guns remained silent.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4, he said republicans run the risk of "collapsing the entire process down around their heads".

"Their inability to do anything on this issue is putting the whole process under real threat," he said.

President of the Methodist Church Dr Kenneth Wilson said the IRA had the power to ease the logjam. He issued a direct appeal to the republican paramilitary group on BBC Radio Ulster's Sunday Sequence programme.

"Even if until this moment you never intended to decommission, it's possible for you to change, it's possible for you make a magnanimous gesture," he said.

He said this would not mean "marching in time to the British tune or to the unionist tune, but if I may say, to God's tune".

Meanwhile, a bill to suspend Northern Ireland's political institutions is being debated at Westminster.

Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson introduced the bill to the House of Commons on Friday, saying it would become law if there was no positive move on IRA decommissioning in the coming week.

The IRA has said that the arms issue could be resolved - but not on British and unionist terms.

Friday, the day scheduled for suspension of the assembly is also the day before an Ulster Unionist ruling council meeting takes place on Saturday to review progress on decommissioning.

The party said it could not continue in the power-sharing government with Sinn Fein unless the IRA decommissioned by the end of January.