The peace process is in the grips of a "very deep sense of crisis", Sinn Féin president Mr Gerry Adams warned today.
Gerry Adams
Speaking at Westminster ahead of a meeting deferred until tomorrow with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Mr Adams said the British and Irish governments were contributing to the problem by suggesting they are taking a hard-line approach to his party.
Mr Adams, who will have talks with Mr Blair at his country residence Chequers in Buckinghamshire, told journalists: "I think it is very fair to say that there is a very deep sense of crisis in the peace process at this time.
"It predates the Northern Bank robbery and the accusations that have flowed from it.
"Obviously the accusations flowing from that robbery have compounded the difficulties, but the difficulties emerged in December when Ian Paisley of the DUP rejected what were seismic initiatives on a range of issues by Republicans and the comprehensive agreement which would have flowed from that."
The £26.5 million Northern Bank raid in Belfast - which Northern Ireland chief constable Mr Hugh Orde has blamed on the IRA - had been seized on by "anti-Republican elements" for their own purposes, said Mr Adams.
Mr Adams told reporters: "Tomorrow's meeting, I hear it has been characterised, I hear Tom Kelly [Mr Blair's official spokesman] at his work, characterising it as a confrontation, we are going to be told straight what is happening and so on and so forth.
"We are approaching the meeting positively. No one should think for one moment that we are going to be at a meeting which will be characterised by the spin.
"Tony Blair knows us well enough, knows what has been achieved, knows his own contribution to it, knows our contribution to it, and knows that confrontation just won't work."
Sinn Féin's chief negotiator, Mr Martin McGuinness, said the party's delegation would use the meeting to raise the case of Mr Martin Doherty, who is in custody for being in contempt of the Bloody Sunday Inquiry.
Mr Doherty (49) from Derry, refused to give evidence to the tribunal and was jailed for three months.
Mr McGuinness said: "The nationalist community believe it is an absolute disgrace that he has been sentenced to three months' imprisonment for contempt of the Saville tribunal simply because he was not prepared to attend that tribunal . . . on the basis that he wasn't even at the Bloody Sunday march on that day."