The Sinn Féin president has expressed disappointment at progress made at Thursday's Anglo-Irish summit between the Taoiseach and Mr Tony Blair.
Mr Gerry Adams said in Belfast yesterday that the most notable thing about the Downing Street meeting was that celebrity chef Jamie Oliver prepared the food.
Accompanied by his party's policing spokesman, Mr Gerry Kelly, Mr Adams nonetheless said that restoration of the Northern institutions could "eventually" be achieved. But he warned that if the progress sought was to be won, "the people in Downing Street need to pull their socks up".
Sinn Féin is keen to see British confirmation of pledges contained in a speech by Mr Blair in Belfast last October shortly after the institutions were suspended. The Prime Minister said outstanding aspects of the Belfast Agreement needed to be implemented. But trust in the political process could not be restored without an end to all paramilitary activity.
Republicans are pressing for further changes to the new policing dispensation, the granting of more powers to the Policing Board, which Sinn Féin boycotts, and the transfer of justice powers to a restored Executive and Assembly. They also want progress on demilitarisation, notably and noticeably the removal of British army watchtowers in south Armagh.
A deal still appears some way off despite widespread acknowledgement by sources on all sides about what it could contain. Yesterday's exchanges concentrated not on what a deal could address, but on who should move first.
Mr Adams, quoted in the Guardian, said it was necessary to obtain safeguards concerning unionist involvement in the process. In an interview in which he referred positively to the possibility of IRA moves, he said: "If the British government is wanting the IRA to do big things, then [it] will have to do big things to create the conditions where there's a potential to get the IRA to move. And if that's done, if it's possible to get a deal, which involved the two governments and the republicans, then the third segment comes into play. That is to get the unionists involved and to keep them involved."
The Ulster Unionist leader insisted the onus was on the IRA to jump first. Borrowing Mr Blair's phrase, Mr David Trimble told the BBC what was needed were acts of completion by the IRA and not "acts of beginning".
"If they do the whole job, not just a gesture, not just a beginning, if they completed the job and if we also saw the winding down of the paramilitary organisation - because that has to be out of the picture and they know that - we would be delighted," he said."We would then have the basis on which to reform the institutions."
Sinn Féin criticised the latest PSNI plan to sign up 1,500 part-timers without recourse to the Patten 50:50 cross-community recruitment guideline. Mr Kelly said the move made a bad situation worse. He stressed that Sinn Féin could not sign up to new policing arrangements until the "Patten threshold" had been met. Mr Adams said such a decision could only be taken by his party's national executive.
"It's their decision whether they actually support and whether they encourage their sons and daughters to join," he said. Underscoring the sensitivity of policing as a political issue for republicans, he warned: "I can't quantify if we get to that point how many people we would take with us. We would obviously seek to take everyone with us."