The Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble, has accused Sinn Fein of rejecting the Belfast Agreement after the IRA statement on the peace deal.
The fringe loyalist parties took opposing views on the IRA's position. The Progressive Unionist Party, the UVF's political wing, believed the statement signalled the republican movement was shifting towards compromise.
The Ulster Democratic Party, the UDA's political wing, said the IRA had rejected the settlement but thought there was nothing to indicate the Provisionals were "returning to war".
Republican sources both for and against the deal denied this interpretation and said the IRA was going as far as it could at this stage to endorse the Belfast Agreement.
Mr Trimble reacted angrily to the IRA statement and called on the British government to respond accordingly. "This statement is in effect a rejection of the agreement by Sinn Fein/IRA," he said. "The government now must make it very clear to them that they cannot have the benefits of the Stormont agreement without accepting the obligations that flow from it," he added.
"So things like prisoner release, the opportunity of being involved in the administration of Northern Ireland are not to be made available to them unless they accept it really must now be peace. You can't say there is a peace agreement if some party has a private army armed to the teeth ready for action."
The UUP MP, Mr Jeffrey Donaldson, who is seen as anti-agreement, said the IRA statement "gave the lie to any pretence that this is a peace deal". It was "the greatest deceit ever practised on the people of Northern Ireland", he said.
The DUP leader, the Rev Ian Paisley, said the IRA statement showed there would be no peace in the North. "The IRA is . . . warning the government that if it doesn't get what it wants, it will go back to terrorism."
The anti-paramilitary group, Families Against Intimidation and Terror, was disappointed at the IRA's refusal to decommission. It had boosted No campaigners, it said. "Do the IRA really want to keep their weapons so they can continue to shoot more young people and pensioners as they did last week?" it asked.
The Police Federation said the IRA's refusal to decommission demolished the arguments of those who believed the IRA should be disbanded. Mr Mark Durkan of the SDLP described the tone of the IRA statement as "arrogant".
The Provisionals could not ignore the will of the Irish electorate if they were true republicans and would have to start handing over weapons if the agreement was accepted in the referendum.
Sinn Fein chairman Mr Mitchel McLaughlin found the IRA statement encouraging. "We could have had a different statement from the IRA and we must welcome the fact we didn't," he said.
Sinn Fein president Mr Gerry Adams was asked for his opinion on the IRA's insistence that the simultaneous referendums on both sides of the Border this month would not constitute national self-determination.
"My own view is that the referendums are just that - they are significant and important but they are not the exercise of national self-determination," he said. While the Hume-Adams statements had upheld the right of the Irish people to national self-determination, there had been no agreement on how the exercise of that right could be brought about.
Meanwhile , Mr Trimble and his senior colleagues, have sent a letter to the party's constituency associations sating that all candidates in the assembly elections must support the Belfast Agreement. Elections will be held in June is the peace deal is approved in the next month's referendum.The move has been seen as an attempt by Mr trimble to strengthen his grip on the party.