The Ulster Unionist Party will have to "review its approach" to the peace process unless the IRA moves on decommissioning, the UUP's Mr Jeffrey Donaldson, has warned.
The comments by the one of the UUP's most prominent critics of the Belfast Agreement follow an IRA New Year statement which urged the British government to take responsibility for the resolution of the deadlock. The Lagan Valley MP said the IRA statement offered "nothing new".
"In the absence of any real progress in the next few days it's clear we will want to meet again to review the situation and consider our approach to the current progress," he said.
"Clearly we would have to move to have Sinn Fein excluded from the Executive in the absence of decommissioning and if that wasn't possible we would be looking at a suspension."
Mr Donaldson said the Ulster Unionist Council, which last met in the Waterfront Hall in October, would meet again in the near future to debate the issue.
"We have been waiting now for 2-1/2 years since the agreement for movement on the arms issue and, with the exception of a couple of arms dumps inspections, the IRA have not moved," he said.
Welcoming the IRA statement the Sinn Fein Assembly member Mr Gerry Kelly said the British Prime Minister had to take political responsibility for decommissioning to avert a "substantial crisis" in the peace process.
"Tony Blair has the power and the authority and he needs to have the wisdom to make the right decision here," he said.
"Most of the drive against him making the right political decision is coming from military-minded people, people who would never have signed up to the Good Friday Agreement."
Mr Kelly also said that Mr Blair should take action to amend the Policing Act.
"We have said time and time again it's not good enough for the prime minister to say you've got legislation and that's the end of it. It can be changed," he said.
"It needs to go back to the legislative process to bring about the changes necessary to bring about a real policing service."
Meanwhile, Mr John Hume, the leader of the SDLP, has called on the IRA to renew its contact with Gen John de Chastelain.
Mr Hume also said there could be no change in the political status of Northern Ireland without the consent of the majority of its people.
"Now David Trimble and his colleagues who are for the agreement have achieved that principle. It is accepted by the whole of nationalist Ireland, North and South, including Sinn Fein," he said.
The Ulster Unionist security spokesman, Mr Ken Maginnis, meanwhile has described the IRA's New Year message as "the most disappointing statement of the year".
"The idea that somehow everything is up to the British Prime Minister is fundamentally dishonest," he said.
