Sinn Fein is to meet the Northern Secretary, Dr John Reid, tomorrow to discuss its complaints that he is adopting a pro-unionist stance.
The party believes that, since taking over from Mr Peter Mandelson, Dr Reid has sought to consolidate the position of the Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble.
Dr Reid yesterday rejected claims that he was siding with unionists by making Provisional IRA disarmament a precondition for further progress in the peace process.
He said the political reforms achieved so far proved that the British government had not put obstacles in the way of the peace process. "I have never argued that decommissioning is a precondition for anything," he said.
"It is absurd to suggest that because if that was the case we would not have progressed with the new policing service, and we would not have established the new institutions."
However, the Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, accused Dr Reid of pandering to unionists by effectively supporting Mr Trimble's ban on Sinn Fein Ministers attending North-South ministerial meetings.
"David Trimble's fracturing of the political institutions means not only that the Sinn Fein electorate is denied its rights or that the Minister of Education and Minister of Health are prevented from doing their jobs, it also means that the All-Ireland Ministerial Council cannot meet," he said.
Sinn Fein also said it would take 25 years to secure a representative number of Catholics and Protestants in the North's new police force. The party's policing spokesman, Mr Alex Maskey, dismissed as unimportant the disclosure that almost 8,000 people had applied to joined the force.
"There will be less than 3 per cent of these people actually recruited," he said. "That means it's going to take, at the current level of recruitment, in the region of 25 years to give us a representative police service. That is unacceptable to my community."
The UUP security spokesman, Mr Ken Maginnis, said the main problem faced by the new force was the clamour to join it. "In many ways the difficulties derive from the fact that in both communities there has been an overwhelming support for the new service," he said.
Out of the 8,000 applicants, the first 240 recruits will be chosen and start their training in September. They will begin duties on the streets next spring. A further 480 recruits will join next year. Dr Reid described the response to the recruitment drive as "quite staggering".
Meanwhile, Mr David Burnside, the UUP's candidate in South Antrim for the forthcoming Westminster election, has called for greater unionist unity. "A large section of the unionist population has been turned off from active participation in political and public life by being sickened by unionists attacking one another," he said.
The UUP chairman, Lord Rogan, last night urged the British government to reaffirm June as "the only deadline" for the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons.