Sinn Féin has accused the DUP of holding up the pace of political change and going on holiday at a time when moves to restore devolution should be intensified. Dan Keenan, Northern News Editor, reports.
Mr Gerry Adams, indicating a worsening of the political atmosphere in Belfast as the marching season gets under way, rejected reports that the DUP required Sinn Féin to prove its constitutional intentions before any agreement on devolution to Stormont could be considered.
"I have made it very clear that the terms as we know it that the DUP have publicly expressed are not acceptable," Mr Adams said.
Referring to suggestions that his party would have to observe six months free of paramilitary activity, he asked: "How could they be acceptable?" "These ideas of being decontaminated or being tested or being verified, those have long since passed."
Referring to the effective putting on hold of the political process over the summer months, he added: "What we need to do is to crunch in a comprehensive way all of the elements involved and then implement what we agree in a practical and an urgent and an expeditious way as is possible."
He again cited what he sees as the inevitability of direct negotiations between the DUP and Sinn Féin. "Will there be a deal done eventually with the DUP? Will they talk to us eventually? Of course they will but they cannot be allowed by the governments to do it on their timeframe or on their timescale."
Publicly, the British and Irish governments insist that they are not letting the political process drift. Privately, however, there are suggestions that Stormont could be closed and Assembly members' salaries stopped around the anniversary of last November's elections if there is no progress. The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said yesterday that while the DUP refusal to meet Sinn Féin was a problem, he still believed the largest unionist party was "up for" a deal. In London, the Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble, pressed the British government in the Commons to come up with new arrangements if there was no progress.
The DUP leader, the Rev Ian Paisley, angrily hit back at Mr Trimble, calling him a "culprit" and pressing him again to reveal details of the deal the UUP concluded with Sinn Féin last autumn designed to restore the Assembly. The deal collapsed over a dispute about the visibility of IRA decommissioning.
Dr Mitchell Reiss, the US special envoy, will comment on his latest talks with the Northern parties and the two governments this morning. He was in Dublin last night for his latest meeting on this his third visit to Ireland.
The SDLP will also be in Dublin today for talks with the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, at Iveagh House. The delegation, led by Mr Mark Durkan, will press for a concerted effort to break the impasse. The SDLP also wants to see as much of the Belfast Agreement as is possible up and running.
The sharper tone of the exchanges between the parties in Belfast followed street violence in west Belfast late on Tuesday night. Tension in the area has risen following the Orange Order's controversial Whiterock parade last weekend, which had been originally banned then permitted by the Parades Commission. It passed off peacefully.
The annual Drumcree commemoration of the Somme takes place on Sunday in Co Armagh, but will not be allowed to march along the nationalist Garvaghy Road in Portadown despite a last-ditch appeal to the commission by the Orange Order.
Belfast City Council holds its Somme commemoration at the cenotaph at City Hall this morning, but without Sinn Fein's Mr Joe O'Donnell, the deputy lord mayor.