Sinn Féin is serious about trying to get a deal in the current
negotiations to stabilise the Northern Ireland peace process, party president Mr Gerry Adams said today.
Mr Adams held informal discussions with SDLP leader Mr John Hume at Stormont today as efforts continued in Belfast, London and Dublin to find a way forward in the peace process.
Flanked by party colleagues Mr Pat Doherty, Ms Michelle Gildernew and Mr Conor Murphy at Stormont, Mr Adams said: "I can tell you I am not using my energy not to get a deal".
"I am involved. I was talking yesterday. I was talking on Saturday. We talked right up until Christmas. We have remained in constant contact with the Irish Government, the US administration and I am not in that to do a ‘No Deal’," he added.
The SDLP is under pressure from unionists and the British government to break ranks with Sinn Féin and endorse the new policing structures. However, the party has withheld its support until it can get assurances on a number of issues.
Sinn Féin is also engaged in intense discussions surrounding the question of IRA disarmament and the scaling down of British army bases and military operations in republican areas.
Mr Adams said the onus was on the British government to return to the agreement forged last May which saw the IRA outline the circumstances in which it would put its weapons beyond use.
He warned against attempting to "cajole, break, intimidate or fracture the broad democratic consensus" among nationalists which saw the Patten Commission's police reforms as the platform for a new beginning to policing.
With possible general and local government elections looming, he acknowledged that could complicate the search for a deal.
The West Belfast MP noted some republicans thought that the British government was already on an election footing.