The Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, has said the Belfast Agreement is still "salvageable". In the meantime the challenge was to ensure that the paramilitary groups which had ceased violence remained on ceasefire, he added.
The Sinn Fein leader also described as "disgraceful" the revelations arising from the Flood tribunal. "There is graft right into the very sinews of the political institutions," he said.
He complained of "verbalised republicans" in some political parties in the South who were prepared to take cash payments in "brown envelopes" for political favours.
Speaking in Belfast as republicans prepared for Easter commemoration ceremonies through out Ireland tomorrow, Mr Adams said yesterday that the physical-force tradition of republicanism would be a thing of the past when a "democratic peace settlement" was achieved. Republicans were dedicated to the change envisaged in the Belfast Agreement becoming "irreversible", he said.
"We are about change, the Good Friday agreement is about change. Let's have that change manifest itself. The big effort is to keep the peace process. Let's do our best to keep all those on cessation on cessation. Let's renew ourselves at Easter, let's re-energise the struggle."
Mr Adams warned, however, that the hopes and expectations generated by the Belfast Agreement were now at an all-time low, and he again blamed the British government and the Ulster Unionist Party for the current deadlock. "This is a time of crisis, a crisis created by a British government that caved in to unionist threats," he said.
He rejected statements by unionists, such as the UUP leader, Mr David Trimble, that the onus now was on republicans to state what they could offer to end the stalemate, and insisted it was up to the British government to drive the process forward. "I can't expect the unionists to co-operate if Mr Blair continues to let them off the hook," he said.
"I don't expect him to deliver the unionists. The unionists are a people with a sense of themselves. But I do expect him to say that we are implementing this agreement, folks, and you would be better getting on board because we are going to do it anyway, because it is the right thing to do because we signed up to it."
Mr Adams complained that the republican commitment to the peace process was not properly recognised. "There is an underevaluation of the IRA cessation. There is an under-evaluation, and a devaluing of what Sinn Fein has done in embracing the institutions, especially the one of the six counties."
He appealed to republicans throughout Ireland to turn out in strength at about 50 Provisional commemoration ceremonies. "This is a ready-made opportunity for people to express their criticism of recent British government decisions," he said.
