Northern Ireland Protestant leader David Trimble accused the Irish Republican Army on Tuesday of defaulting on the Good Friday peace deal for Northern Ireland by failing to turn over its weapons.
Representatives of both the British and Irish governments were in the Irish capital reviewing a report issued by Canadian Gen. John de Chastelain on the IRA's progress in decommissioning -- turning in its vast weapons cache -- to determine what was to happen with the British province's fragile multi-party, home rule government.
De Chastelain's report was expected to be made public later on Tuesday, but Trimble said he already knew what the report said.
"I am in a position to say to you that we know there has been no act of decommissioning," said Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionists. "While there may be some other language in the report, that cannot change the simple fact that de Chastelain found that no act of decommissioning had taken place.
"That means, as far as we're concerned, that there has been a default," Northern Ireland's first minister said.
Under the circumstances, Trimble said, there was no choice but for Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary Peter Mandelson to suspend the assembly, formed after a compromise was reached last fall.
"My expectation is that we will be moving fairly soon to the suspension of the agreement," he said. "It is regrettable that it is so, but it is unavoidable."
Adams: 'No default by Sinn Fein'
Gerry Adams, president of the republican party Sinn Fein, reacted angrily to Trimble's suggestion that Sinn Fein, a political ally of the IRA, was no longer welcome at the governing table.
"You show me in this where our party has defaulted," Adams said, holding a copy of the Good Friday accord. "You show me in this where there can be a unilateral decision by one party that decommissioning must be done on their terms yesterday. There is no default by Sinn Fein on this issue."
Adams admitted that the arduous peace process -- an attempt to end 30 years of bitter enmity and violence between the province's pro-republican Catholics and pro-British rule protestants -- had reached a crisis point. But he said Sinn Fein was not walking away from the process.
"Let's pin our hopes on ... the democratic will of people and the hope of people that this can be sorted out," he said. "because I can tell you this -- if the rejectionist unionists have their way, and if the Ulster Unionist party either walks from this process or forces the government to collapse the process, then I don't know how we're going to put it together again."
The IRA was not particularly helpful, though, issuing a statement that made no mention of when it might actually hand over its weapons. During meetings with de Chastelain's commission, the statement said, IRA representatives made clear the paramilitary group's position.
"Our representative stressed that we are totally committed to the peace process, that the IRA wants a permanent peace, that the declaration and maintenance of the cessation, which is now entering its fifth year, is evidence of that, that the IRA's guns are silent and that there is no threat to the peace process from the IRA," said the statement.
The peace process nearly fell apart over decommissioning last fall, when republican and unionist representatives could not agree on the terms of decommissioning. But U.S. Sen. George Mitchell, who brokered the original agreement, returned to Northern Ireland to bring the distrustful parties back on track.
Last November's agreement called for the formation of the province's home rule assembly -- with two seats for Sinn Fein representatives -- followed by decommissioning.
'There was no guarantee'
But the parties appeared on Tuesday to be as far apart as ever, with the unionists insisting on substantial progress in the de Chastelain report as a prerequisite to continuing the coalition government.
Adams, however -- who said he had "no sense of when the IRA was going to turn in its weapons" -- said that Sinn Fein's position was that decommissioning would take place by May 2000, as stipulated in the Good Friday accord.
"The Sinn Fein position is that there was no guarantee of a decommissioning," Adams said. "They told us that. And they told us the only way for this to be resolved was collectively, and they told us that it was through the institutions being put in place. And that's the truth."