Republican Sinn Fein president Mr Ruairi O Bradaigh has said the Belfast Agreement is not a stepping-stone to a free and independent Ireland but an "obstacle on the road which must be removed".
In his address to his party's ardfheis, Mr O Bradaigh said the agreement sowed "the seeds of future conflict". He predicted the euphoria surrounding it would pass. As the "New Stormont fails to deliver" for nationalists, traditional republicanism would "come into its own again". He said the new political arrangements copper-fastened partition.
"The Stormont Agreement simply updates and strengthens English rule here by including nationalist representatives in executive positions. They sit in the old Stormont parliament which has been refurbished after the fire there - just like British rule itself.
"It is a step backwards and away from a free Ireland. The Provisionals, in their new role as a fully constitutional party, cannot justify their rejection of Sunningdale and their acceptance now of less. The sacrifices between 1973 and 1998 cannot be validated by them on that basis."
Mr O Bradaigh accused Provisional Sinn Fein of remaining silent on its policy changes. "Mr Adams and his associates used to sing off the same hymn-sheet as ourselves so relatively recently that they have had to sing dumb. This silence on their part was because the ghosts of Bobby Sands, Ciaran Doherty and all those other brave men and women who sacrificed all to ensure political success for the republican movement still haunt them from the recent past." Mr O Bradaigh claimed the Belfast Agreement was rail-roaded through nationalist Ireland. "People were stampeded on the basis that the alternative was war, and the agreement was not assessed on its merits or demerits.
"Fianna Fail posters and badges said `Vote Yes for Peace' while David Trimble stated that the alternative was another `30 years of misery'. UDP spokesperson Davy Adams said that rejection would mean `violence on a scale never witnessed before'.
"On the weekend before polling, church congregations were told from the altar to vote `Yes'."
Mr O Bradaigh said the agreement had not brought peace and nationalists were still being killed. He alleged media bias in favour of some political parties and individuals. The "pernicious non-transferable speech" of Mr John Hume was "never challenged or debated either by the intellectual pygmies in Leinster House" or by The Irish Times or RTE.
Mr O Bradaigh claimed that since the Omagh bomb, Republican Sinn Fein members and supporters had been regularly "harassed and intimidated" by the Special Branch.
He said the Government had pledged to break Republican Sinn Fein but that the party was not going away.
"We have been down this road before, many times. Internment camps, military tribunals, special courts and special laws are among the array of instruments of coercion used against us in the past. But they have all failed. We will not be driven underground by the Special Branch or by the Provos. We demand and will continue to assert freedom to hold opinions, freedom to express them and to engage in political activity, whether that suits those that uphold British rule in Ireland or not."