Northern Ireland First Minister Mr David Trimble is seeking an urgent meeting with police chiefs following the discovery of IRA intelligence files on leading Conservatives.
But Sinn Fein leader Mr Gerry Adams is sceptical about the find and says the security forces are manipulating the situation in an effort to undermine the peace process.
Mr Trimble has said the situation as "might become a defining moment in the peace process" and claims the IRA files raise a number of questions.
They were discovered by police investigating the theft of documents from Special Branch offices in Belfast during a break-in being blamed on the IRA.
"What we need to hear from the police is precisely what is it about what they found that they regard as being sinister and what does it point towards. We need to operate on a basis of clarity not rumour," Mr Trimble said.
He said he also wanted to hear from the Government about its own investigation into the break-in at the Special Branch offices in Castlereagh.
"We need to have clarity and we need to have certainty and if there is evidence then we have to have action, let there be no doubt about that."
There was a need for very careful language in the current situation but if the IRA was responsible for the break-in at Castlereagh it was a breach of their ceasefire - in their own terms, he said.
"If it is the case that the IRA was responsible for the raid on Castlereagh, then they have broken their ceasefire and the Secretary of State Mr John Reid must act."
Giving a clear indication he would insist on action against Sinn Fein if the IRA was guilty, Mr Trimble said no one should be in any doubt that his party would ensure that there was a political process that was only for those who were genuinely committed to exclusively peaceful and democratic means.
Mr Adams reacted angrily today to what he described as "sustained efforts to create an entirely contrived crisis in the peace process". He warned both governments to be "very circumspect about how they responded to the current flurry of media speculation".
He said threats by anti-agreement unionists to take action against the party were "nothing new". Some of them had built political careers on the word "no" he said.
"The chief culprits in the present controversy are the failed and faceless manipulators in the Special Branch and British Intelligence services.
"Everyone needs to be very sceptical about stories emanating from these elements or their surrogates," he said.
Mr Adams insisted that despite "ongoing provocations" the IRA was continuing to make a huge contribution to the process - its recent second act of decommissioning was evidence of that. "As I said before, after the recent raid on Castlereagh, and the astonishing claim that this involved republicans, our party will not be scape-goated," he said at a meeting in Tralee.
PA