Bloody Sunday tribunal to delay legal action against McGuinness
Inquiry chairman, Lord Saville, said they would continue the process of encouraging former paramilitaries to come forward of their own accord to give evidence.
If this happens, the significance of the Sinn Fein leader's refusal to name names would no longer be of any significance, he said.
"Consequently, we take the view that the proper course for us now to take is to defer a consideration of the question until we have seen the results of the process to which I have referred."
Yesterday, a former Official IRA member told the Saville Tribunal he did not recall hearing any shots before his comrade fired at a soldier on Bloody Sunday.
The ex-paramilitary, known to the Inquiry as OIRA2, denied he and his associate had planned the gun attack on soldiers in the Bogside on January 30, 1972.
He described the attack as a reflex action: "Anybody who had planned a snipe from that position would have literally been taking his life in his hands."
The former paramilitary the first member of the officials to give evidence to the tribunal said they had gone to an arms dump at Columcille Court in the Bogside to collect a rifle.
While they were retrieving the gun he said they heard a noisy confrontation involving a 30 to 40 strong crowd.
"Just then I heard someone in the crowd shouting 'two boys have been shot!'" he added.
But OIRA2 told the inquiry that he did not remember hearing the shots before his associate, OIRA1, fired the single round at a soldier on the roof of a Presbyterian Church.
"I cannot honestly say that I heard the shots myself, probably because of the background noise."
Counsel for the inquiry, Cathryn McGahey, asked if hearing the shouting from the crowd was enough to break his organisation's orders not to fire at the army.
"Your evidence is that you heard noise and a confrontation. You had no idea, did you, whether the soldier who you could see had fired any shots.
"In those circumstances a shot at the army by the Official IRA would surely not be a defensive shot?"
He replied: "I actually heard someone shouting 'two boys have been shot' and I would have automatically assumed that the shooting would have come from the army.
"Hearing the shouting from the crowd, I automatically assumed that shots had been fired, that first strike had happened and that the army had engaged in the first strike."
Soldiers have claimed they were fired upon first on the day that 13 unarmed civilians were shot dead and 14 others wounded by paratroopers in Derry.
OIRA2 said the gun, which was loaded, had been left by a volunteer in a coal bunker outside a flat in the Columcille Court.
Challenged by Ms McGahey that they had gone there with the aim of mounting an attack he said: "No. That wasn't our intention at all."
