Sinn Féin chairman Mitchel McLaughlin said tonight he believed there would be no change to the IRA's position as set out in its recent statement to the British and Irish governments.
He believed the group had "closed" on the issues it had outlined and that there was no chance of it moving.
Mr McLaughlin was speaking ahead of a meeting of the party's national executive in Julianstown, Co Meath, which Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams and chief negotiator Martin McGuinness had been due to attend. The pair pulled out at the last minute in order to continue talks with Irish Government officials in Belfast.
Mr McLaughlin said: "I can only take the IRA's statement, which is a matter of record. They have closed on this. "Presumably through their own arrangement and people they will have the sense of how difficult it is for them to decollectivise on these issues.
"Nonetheless they did that in response to events over the past week.
"Now I think they have made it clear that is their decision and they are prepared - it would appear - to consider setting their position out in public.
"Now it will be a matter if it happens for people to make a judgment. "I do not believe there is any possibility - and I am not speaking for them - of this being reopened in these circumstances." Mr McLaughlin said Sinn Féin was pressing strongly for the publication of the joint declaration from the two governments.
The issues being put to the parties in the declaration were "full of conditionality". He said: "When people have had the information and can make considered judgments it is important that they will be given the opportunity to vote in an election. "There we will see for ourselves what public opinion makes of it."
Mr McLaughlin said Sinn Féin had put a lot of work into recent talks. "We have stayed at the task overnight," he said. "We have continued to work and press this issue when others made it apparent that they weren't interested in succeeding or that they were prepared at the drop of a hat to walk away from it."
He said there were "very real question marks" over the intention of the two governments to publish their document this side of the election and that there was now an emerging question mark about whether the elections would be held.
People should draw encouragement from the fact that talks were continuing, he added.