Doubts about the viability of Tony Blair's latest Northern Ireland initiative mounted last night after Gerry Adams warned that Sinn Féin will play no part in any "shadow Assembly" at Stormont.
Declining to say whether this would mean abstention or resignation by Sinn Féin MLAs, Mr Adams told The Irish Times specific tactics would be determined by the party leadership in consultation with the Assembly group.
However, he insisted they would not "acquiesce" with such a development, which he maintained could not work and would result in the destruction of the Belfast Agreement.
The Sinn Féin president's warning came after talks with the British prime minister at Downing Street.
Its immediate effect appeared to be to raise a question mark over next Wednesday's planned summit between Mr Blair and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern.
As SDLP leader Mark Durkan reinforced the scale of nationalist/republican hostility to the emerging British blueprint at his meeting with Mr Ahern in Dublin, the prime minister's spokesman said "no final decisions have been taken" about next week's London talks or the next steps in the process.
However, the spokesman insisted that "decisions will have to be taken" following Mr Adams's explicit call for the abolition of the Assembly should the Rev Ian Paisley's DUP refuse to resume power-sharing government "by early summer". Despite apparent initial denials by the Northern Ireland Office, Sinn Féin and SDLP leaders have confirmed the British proposal - first reported in The Irish Times two weeks ago - to reinstate the Assembly with initially limited powers and an absolute deadline for the re-establishment of an inclusive power-sharing Executive.
During subsequent negotiations the proposed timeframe for this initiative has apparently been set at six months, rather than a year, with the "point of decision" - to resume power-sharing or collapse the Assembly - to be reached in October or November this year.
However, Mr Adams said he went into his meeting with Mr Blair yesterday "with the firm intention of ruling out any sort of shadow Assembly."
Instead of "pandering to the DUP", Mr Adams said the British and Irish governments "should give the DUP a choice - between power-sharing, and the equality agenda, the resumption of inter-governmentalism and the full implementation of all other aspects of the Good Friday agreement".
Mr Adams said the onus was on London and Dublin "to show that the process of change" would continue, whatever the disposition of the DUP.
"It isn't the best," he said. "The optimum is still power-sharing, with Ian Paisley as first minister. But if he [ Dr Paisley] doesn't want that, he's a consenting adult."
Asked if he wasn't engaged in rhetoric designed to pressurise the DUP, Mr Adams said: "The governments would make a mistake if they think we're negotiating on this. It would be to ignore the stresses on the republican project."
Mr Adams said Mr Blair should reinstate the Assembly and, soon after, trigger the mechanism to appoint an Executive.
Asked what should happen in the event of a failure to achieve that, Mr Adams said Secretary of State Peter Hain would have "no alternative" but to follow through his threat to close the Assembly and refuse further elections.
Of the proposed alternative, Mr Adams said: "We're not against a shadow Assembly because we're bloody-minded but because it won't work. .. There is no possibility of the DUP coming on board if they are being pandered to ... We won't be part of it.
"They [ the two governments] would just be tearing the Good Friday agreement up. It cannot work unless we acquiesce, and we won't."