Sinn Féin today challenged Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy to a public debate with about paramilitary activity as talks to restore the Stormont Assembly remained in crisis.
Sinn Féin national chairman Mr Mitchel McLaughlin issued the challenge as British Prime Minister Tony Blair prepared to meet the SDLP in London today.
Mr McLaughlin accused the British government of focusing in recent weeks only on alleged IRA activity, ignoring loyalist violence and running away from a comprehensive debate on paramilitarism.
The Foyle MLA said: "We tried to have this discussion within the parameters of the review but the British government ran away from the debate and cancelled a planned plenary meeting on these important matters.
"It is ironic that on the very day that the British government claimed that unionist paramilitaries had killed seven people, carried out 135 shootings and 41 bombings in the past 12 months, Mr Murphy appeared on the media threatening the rights and entitlements of the majority of nationalist voters in the six counties."
Unionists have in recent weeks demanded sanctions be imposed on Sinn Féin in the review of the Belfast Agreement at Stormont following the attempted kidnapping of dissident republican Bobby Tohill from a Belfast bar.
The IRA leadership denied it authorised the incident.