Intense political negotiations aimed at breaking the deadlock in the Northern Ireland peace process have failed to make any progress, Sinn Féin president Mr Gerry Adams said today.
Mr Adams blamed the "dead hand of securocrats" for the stalemate and urged British prime minister Mr Tony Blair to exert his authority in order to prevent the Belfast Agreement from collapsing.
Mr Adams also called on Ulster Unionist leader Mr David Trimble to work for a successful outcome to the political discussion rather than yield to hardliners within his party.
The downbeat assessment followed rounds of talks between Mr Blair, the Taoiseach Mr Ahern Irish premier Bertie Ahern
Over the past seven days there has been heightened speculation that a breakthrough was imminent but Mr Adams insisted there was little to support such an assessment.
Mr Adams said "I'm saying on these crucial issues that the gap between the British government's proposals on policing and the type of policing service which was agreed on Good Friday, that that gap remains as wide as ever."
Mr Adams said his party's call for amendments to the Police Act is being blocked by British insistence that there is not time to implement legislative changes in the current British Parliament.
"The Prime Minister may want to do some of this stuff then feels the dead hand of his own system, the securocrats," he told BBC Radio Ulster.
In contrast to Mr Adams' assessment, the SDLP was today giving little away about the state of the negotiations.
"There has been some progress over recent weeks and that's all we are saying," a party spokesman said.
But Mr Adams stressed his belief that an eventual resolution would be achieved. "It's my conviction it's going to be sorted out because if we don't have a policing service now we still need a policing service.
"We can't have a society in which there are armed groups, so we need to get a situation where that ceases to be."
PA