Sinn Fein's chief negotiator said today's visit to Northern Ireland by the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, would be worse than useless if Mr Blair was not going to announce a resolution to the policing and demilitarisation impasse.
Mr Martin McGuinness also said that if the difficulties facing full implementation of the Belfast Agreement could not be resolved during Mr Blair's visit, discussions on them should be delayed until after the British general election.
Speaking to reporters in Derry, Mr McGuinness also said that last weekend's bomb attack on the BBC Television Centre at Wood Lane in London had been carried out by a group which did not have the courage to claim its actions.
"If he [Mr Blair] is going to arrive here with a resolution of the difficulties, and I believe the difficulties can only by resolved by him recognising the need to fulfil the promises and commitments he made on the 5th and 6th of May last year, if he's prepared to come and say he's prepared to implement fully the Patten proposals and embrace the process of demilitarisation, then I think that would be a positive development.
"If he's coming here with something less than that, then I think it would be worse than useless," he said.
"In fact, they are telling us effectively, I think, that they can't sort this out this side of a general election. Maybe we have to wait until the election is over. If that is the case, in my opinion we are better waiting to get this right because there are serious concerns within the nationalist-republican community which have been articulated by Sinn Fein and by the SDLP and by the hierarchy of the Catholic Church over Peter Mandelson's policing Bill and the fact that that falls well short of the promises that were made to bring about a new beginning to policing in the Good Friday agreement," said Mr McGuinness.
He also said republicans did not support the actions of those responsible for last weekend's bomb. "The fact is that the groups involved are micro-organisations who don't even have the courage to claim the actions that they are responsible for and who make no attempt whatsoever to put forward a political project to the people.
"Republicanism always worked on the basis that it would never be successful unless it had the support of the people. These people do not have that support," he said.