US mediator George Mitchell was back in Belfast on November 8 on the last leg of a campaign to break the deadlock of the Northern Ireland peace process.

Mitchell was expected to discuss a blueprint for ending a standoff over demands for guerrilla disarmament and creation of new political structures.

Reports said Mitchell might make an announcement within 48 hours about the result of his talks which were the core of a 10-week-long review of the troubled peace accord signed in April last year.

Pro-British unionists refuse to sit in a coalition government with the Sinn Fein party unless its Irish Republican Army (IRA) guerrilla wing disarms.

Mitchell brokered the Good Friday agreement in April 1998. Britain and Ireland brought him back into the peace process in the hope that his diplomatic skills would produce a compromise between the parties and trigger a fresh start for the accord.

Mitchell adjourned the talks last week, saying he wanted to consult with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern and US President Bill Clinton before completing a report on the review of the peace accord.