Sinn Fein's Mr Mitchel McLaughlin has warned that forcing the IRA to make a token gesture on decommissioning would destabilise the organisation's leadership and have unforeseen consequences.
People were pushing the decommissioning issue to an "either/or" scenario - either decommissioning or the Good Friday Agreement, he said; Mr David Trimble, the UUP leader, was pushing the issue inexorably in that way.
That could lead people to conclude "that the IRA will not decommission on demand so what do they do?" he asked.
He said there were people within republicanism who were more militaristic and much less convinced that the peace process was going to work, and that the Omagh bombing demonstrated the absolute need to ensure there were no additional dissidents.
The only way to avoid this was to move forward and set up the political institutions contained in the Good Friday Agreement as an alternative to the armed struggle, he said, at a Sinn Fein public meeting in Drogheda last night.