The two DUP ministers in the Northern Ireland administration will act as "effectively ministers in opposition", according to the deputy leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, Mr Peter Robinson.
He said the ministers would take control of their government departments but would refuse to take their seats alongside Sinn Fein in an executive.
"We will not sit down in an executive with Sinn Fein, but the electorate has given us two places as far as departments are concerned. We're entitled to those places, but the Assembly would then have to decide whether they would permit us to run departments but not sit on the executive," he said.
Mr Robinson also called on Ulster Unionist Party Assembly members to break ranks and back a DUP motion to debate the exclusion of Sinn Fein from an executive. The motion was tabled before the summer recess and is therefore first on the order of business for today.
The support of one Ulster Unionist is necessary for it to be debated. This could take up most of the day, and would delay the triggering of the d'Hondt procedure.
Last night some Ulster Unionists were confident that no UUP Assembly member would back the motion. However, one source was more guarded and said "no one indicated their intent" to back the motion at yesterday's meeting of 27 members of the Assembly party.
To date, one UUP Assembly member has lost the whip for voting with the anti-agreement bloc. Another three members of the Assembly party are seen as potential supporters of the DUP motion.
The current proposals to overcome the political impasse were again criticised by the North's First Minister, Mr David Trimble.
Before a meeting of his Assembly team he cautiously welcomed reports that the British government had drafted a three-part amendment to the new legislation devolving power to the Northern Ireland administration.
He said his party would study the amendments closely but the British government had failed to think through the situation.
"The point that occurs to me is that the fact that the government has to bring amendments in a matter of hours from its own self-imposed deadline is a clear indication of how the proposals were not properly thought through."
He argued that the proposals should go back to those who advised bringing them forward "and ask them what on Earth they thought they were doing."
However, he said, the party would "study and carefully consider" them when they were presented, and hoped "very much that they will develop things".
The senior Ulster Unionist negotiator, Sir Reg Empey, has accused the Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, of giving a "two-fingered salute" to decommissioning.
In an article in yesterday's Irish Times, Mr Adams said Sinn Fein could not speak for the IRA and accused the government of "blowing up a storm of media spin" over the disarmament issue.
Sir Reg said: "Adams is making it clear he did not give any commitment to decommissioning." He condemned the article as a "cold, calculated and deliberate attempt to frustrate the peace process."