Sinn Fein has said Mr Tony Blair must face up to the "securocrats" within the British political and military establishment who wish to destroy the Belfast Agreement.
Mr Gerry Adams said they had to be dealt with if the peace process was to succeed. The "dead hand" of the securocrats was blocking movement on all the important issues.
However, unionist and other nationalist sources were last night optimistic about the chance of serious political progress this week. They said there had been movement on policing and other issues which they believed Sinn Fein was deliberately playing down.
Speaking at a commemoration in Sligo yesterday, Mr Adams said: "The British government signed up in the Good Friday agreement to a new beginning to policing and to demilitarisation.
"It was the right thing to do. It is still the right thing to do. Mr Blair should get on with the job and help create the context in which further progress across the range of issues can be made. Currently, that progress is not being made.
"The British government stance at present is still being dictated by the securocrats. Mr Blair has to face up to the rejectionists within his own system. He has to face down the dissidents within his establishment. The primacy of politics has to become the ethos which governs the British government's management of this process.
"This is the only way that a sustainable new dispensation will be produced. Unless that change takes place, there is little prospect of real progress being made and a serious risk of deepening crisis and a collapse of confidence in the agreement."