Sinn Féin has warned the British and Irish governments that it will not consent to a "shadow" or scrutiny role for the Assembly as part of any proposed transition to power-sharing government at Stormont.
The warning, in the most explicit terms yet, came last night from Sinn Féin's chief negotiator Martin McGuinness after he, party president Gerry Adams, and North Belfast Assembly member Gerry Kelly met the British prime minister at 10 Downing Street.
Mr McGuinness insisted that "the sole purpose" of recalling the suspended Assembly must be "to get a government", and that if the Democratic Unionist Party refused to share power, then the two governments should proceed to implement all other aspects of the Belfast Agreement for which they had responsibility.
Specifically, Mr McGuinness made clear Sinn Féin's view that new British legislation to permit the Assembly to survive without an Executive beyond the six weeks currently defined in statute - and Assembly committees scrutinising the work of direct rule ministers - would fall "outside the terms of the Good Friday accord".
Such proposals were "absolutely unacceptable to Sinn Féin" as the largest nationalist party in the North and it would not give its consent.
"These are the demands of the Democratic Unionist Party," said Mr McGuinness. "They make these demands because they want to see the continuation of unionist domination. This is unacceptable and we will not go along with their game plan."
That raised the distinct prospect of the British and Irish governments, and the DUP, finding themselves without an active nationalist partner at an early point in the new process for restoring devolution, which Mr Blair and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern are expected to announce in Armagh on Thursday.
Mr McGuinness made it clear last night that the party would make no final decisions until after publication of the British-Irish blueprint on Thursday.