Mr Seamus Mallon led opposition to the proposed suspension of the Northern Ireland Executive in the Commons last night, as Mr Gerry Adams raised a question over his leadership of Sinn Fein if the legislative process is not halted.
Senior Irish officials continued to battle against the legislative clock to avert suspension, as Mr Mallon warned there would be "no such thing as a soft landing" if the decision was made to bring the Executive and other institutions, established under the Belfast Agreement, to an end.
The officials, from the Office of the Taoiseach and the Departments of Foreign Affairs and Justice, met their British opposite numbers at Downing Street before and after Mr Adams's meeting with the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, and those negotiations are set to resume this morning.
However, while acknowledging the Government's "massive efforts" to force a shift in the IRA position, Mr David Trimble cast doubt on the likely success of the diplomatic effort. During the second reading of the emergency Northern Ireland Bill - which was approved by 352 votes to 11 - the Ulster Unionist leader declared: "Words are not enough, and it is necessary to move beyond words."
Mr Peter Mandelson, the Northern Ireland Secretary, insisted that without a change of circumstances the loss of cross-community confidence would see the Executive fall apart. "We are not faced with a choice between suspension and imperfect continuation of the Executive," he said. "It is pause or bust."
Despite close questioning from Conservative MPs, Mr Mandelson was unable to confirm that the Irish Government supported the Bill which would enable him to reinstate direct rule by the weekend.
As Dublin continues to focus on the search for a new framework which might provide "clarity" and "certainty" of republican intent to deal with the arms issue, there is as yet no agreement between Dublin and London as to the form suspension might take, or what would happen thereafter.
In a powerful intervention, Mr Mallon said he agreed that pro-agreement unionists had been treated "unfairly". Turning on the republican movement, the Deputy First Minister said: "The Irish people have self-determined that no group on the island of Ireland should hold illegal arms."
However, he argued that suspension would freeze the hope of ever resolving the issue, leaving the initiative in a political vacuum to those who held the weapons. And in a clear signal that he would hold unionists and republicans mutually responsible if suspension occurred, Mr Mallon asked if the "default" had arisen in terms of the Good Friday agreement, an Ulster Unionist deadline or the Mitchell review.
He asked whether London had negotiated a treaty with the Irish Government to provide for the suspension of the North-South bodies; what the structure of the review would be and who would chair it; and whether the remit of Gen de Chastelain's international commission would be extended beyond May 22nd, or if Mr Mandelson envisaged recruiting "any other agency to carry out this work".
Despite his later assertion that he would not spend the rest of his life "trying to shore up a process that is in perpetual crisis", Mr Adams emerged from Downing Street saying that the continuing contacts between the two governments were "a sign all is not yet lost, and there is a chance to avert disaster".