The Sinn Fein leader, Mr Gerry Adams, has warned the British and Irish governments that Northern Ireland is facing a "political vacuum" following the suspension of the executive and its other institutions last week.
Mr Adams was speaking as he emerged from 80 minutes of talks with the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair and the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, at Downing Street last night. He said the Sinn Fein leadership had warned him not to take part in a review process to reform the executive and the institutions. There was no legal basis for a review.
He said he had left the meeting with no indication that the British government was prepared to put the political institutions back in place. Furthermore there was no sense within the British government of the "calamity" injected into the political process by suspending the political institutions.
"We cannot make progress in a political vacuum. We have no room at all to do anything in this situation given the failure of our initiative last weekend," Mr Adams said.
"The British establishment seems to think that Sinn Fein can just absorb all of these blows. We cannot. I can only work within the possibilities of human and political endeavour. It is a two-way street. The institutions have been torn down and the Good Friday agreement has been torn up. I don't think we can play a useful role on the arms issue when all we are met with is rejection and rebuttals."
Mr Adams said after asking the Northern Ireland Secretary, Mr Peter Mandelson, what the British government proposed to do following suspension, he said: "I am still waiting for an intelligible answer."
Mr Martin McGuinness urged Mr Blair to "reflect on the gravity" of the political situation. "At the moment the Good Friday agreement is lying in the wastepaper bin. The government needs to get it out and get serious about the process of conflict resolution in Northern Ireland."
Earlier, the deputy leader of the SDLP, Mr Seamus Mallon, who joined the party leader, Mr John Hume in talks with the two governments at Downing Street said the IRA decision to withdraw its interlocutor from the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning was not only a "studied insult" to Mr Ahern but to the entire political process.