British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been warned that elements within his own system are encouraging a backward slide in the Northern Ireland peace process, Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams said today.
This was being done to placate unionists who were against change, he said.
Mr Adams told republicans at the graveside of former IRA Chief of Staff Joe Cahill, whose funeral took place today: "It is the securocrats on the British side and their allies who are calling the shots."
The republican leadership will be heavily involved in intensive make-or-break talks in September in a bid to restore the power sharing executive in Belfast that was suspended last October over unionist claims of an IRA spy ring operating at Stormont.
"Tony Blair has said if the process isn't going forward, it will go backwards. We have told him in recent times that elements within his own system, particularly within the NIO, are doing their best to subvert progress and to encourage the backward slide," Mr Adams added.
With next month marking the 10th anniversary of the IRA's 1994 ceasefire declaration, he added: "The British government has a clear cut choice. Either it stands with the Good Friday Agreement and builds a bridge towards democracy and equality, or it sides with the forces of reaction as successive British governments did for decades."