Doing business with the Democratic Unionists at some stage in the future is inevitable, Sinn Féin party president Mr Gerry Adams claimed today.
With all sides in Northern Ireland due to hold talks with the British Prime Minister and the Taoiseach later this month in a bid to restore the power-sharing executive in Belfast, Mr Adams admitted there were huge difficulties to overcome.
But at Westminster today he declared: "I want to make it clear that I don't rule out progress because I think it is inevitable that ourselves and the DUP will do business, but I can't tell you when, because that is up to them."
Mr Blair and Mr Ahern will be meeting all the Northern Ireland political parties at Leeds Castle, Maidstone, Kent, on September 16th and 17th.
The executive was suspended in October 2002 amid Unionist claims of an IRA spy ring operating inside government buildings at Stormont.
Mr Paisley has already warned the republican leadership that the Provisionals will have to decommission all their guns before his party will enter into any power-sharing arrangement. The IRA has carried out three acts of disarmament, but details have never been disclosed.
Mr Adams said: "We are there to try and get a comprehensive, definitive conclusion. We want to see a package put together which drags this process on, and we will do our best.
"There are a number of huge difficulties . . . including the unwillingness of political unionism and elements within the British system to embrace the type of changes which are required.
"The DUP have been honest - they want to destroy the Good Friday Agreement. So if you ask me for my expectation . . . then the prospects of progress in terms of seeing that Agreement implemented are totally reliant upon a British Government bringing the Unionists through the pain barrier of reconciling themselves, or coming to tolerate a new dispensation."
PA