There is "no prospect whatsoever" of the IRA surrendering arms to secure Sinn Fein's place on the executive, the party's chief negotiator, Mr Martin McGuinness, has said. There was "absolutely no point" in either government putting pressure on Sinn Fein, as neither he nor Mr Adams could deliver any weapons, he insisted.
In an interview with the Times of London, Mr McGuinness said he was fulfilling Sinn Fein's obligations under the accord, but refused to expand. He would not say whether he had agreed mechanisms for disarmament with the chairman of the international decommissioning body, Gen John de Chastelain.
According to Mr McGuinness, the Belfast Agreement set "no preconditions on Sinn Fein's admission to government beyond an electoral mandate." He said: "People who say Sinn Fein should move beyond the provisions of the Agreement are asking the impossible, particularly against the background of David Trimble's failure to implement the Agreement."
Referring to the decommissioning section of the Belfast document, he insisted that his party had made it "abundantly clear" to both the Irish and the British prime ministers during last year's peace talks that it could not deliver an IRA weapons handover.
Mr McGuinness would, however, not be drawn on whether the IRA ceasefire could collapse.