The Democratic Unionist Party has discounted a threatened Ulster Unionist boycott and signalled the review of the Belfast Agreement - which it maintains is "a renegotiation" - will continue.
Ulster Unionist leader Mr David Trimble warned Mr Tony Blair yesterday he would bring the current talks process to an end on Monday unless the British Prime Minister could "summon up the courage" to act against Sinn Féin following the Provisional IRA's alleged abduction of republican dissident Mr Bobby Tohill in Belfast.
The UUP leader said Mr Blair would know of the Minister for Justice Mr McDowell's "description of their vomit-making hypocrisy" - against which the response of the British government "is seen by people in Northern Ireland as being rank moral cowardice".
And he told Mr Blair: "Unless (you) can summon up the courage to act on this matter within the next few days, then I and my colleagues will take steps next Monday to bring this process to an end."
However DUP deputy leader Mr Peter Robinson derided Mr Trimble's evident fury, telling The Irish Times: "We will continue to talk to legitimate politicians about how to deal with Sinn Féin. He can run away if he wants to. Our renegotiation of the agreement goes on." Mr Robinson continued: "There is ill-disguised mirth in our party at the audacity of this man who sat in government with Sinn Féin while the IRA was doing similar things and worse. Now he's going to storm the ramparts . . . He's had a memory loss. There has been an election. He lost and is no longer in charge."
At the same time, Mr Robinson signalled a hardening of attitude toward the Irish Government, describing the Taoiseach's insistence that there could be no devolved government without Sinn Féin as "not acceptable". British government sources, meanwhile, acknowledged there was no prospect of an early return to devolution following Mr Blair's insistence there could be no compromise on the principle that "people cannot be part of a democratic process unless they abide by the rules of democracy".
Mr Blair told Mr Trimble he was limited as to what he could say about an individual case that is the subject of a police investigation and in respect of which charges would be laid. With that qualification he continued: "We have for a significant period of time said through the Good Friday agreement that people are entitled to participate in the democratic process, but they are only able to do so if they are fully part of the democratic club."
He went on: "You cannot be talking about human rights for people one day and beating the human rights out of them the next."