Mr Tony Blair has told Mr Gerry Adams it is his intention that fresh elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly should go ahead as planned in May. However, the Sinn Féin president said he remained "sceptical" about such assurances from the Prime Minister and British Government.
Mr Adams was speaking yesterday after "a good meeting" marking "a serious engagement" with Mr Blair in Downing Street talks which both sides insisted represented just "the beginning" of an intensive period of negotiations designed to lay the basis for the restoration of the suspended Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive.
Mr Adams told The Irish Times "it would be a huge mistake not to go ahead" with the elections as scheduled, and that such a decision "would remove any sense of democratic ownership by the people" of the institutions of government established under the Belfast Agreement.
Mr Adams said the election "should not be conditional" upon the outcome of the current negotiations centred around Mr Blair's call for "acts of completion", nor should the complete implementation of the agreement on a range of issues discussed yesterday - from policing and demilitarisation, the devolution of policing and justice powers, equality and the development of a human rights ethos - be "filtered through a unionist, or for that matter a nationalist, prism."
Mr Adams acknowledged "unionists can withdraw from the institutions" and that an election would not necessarily guarantee the reinstatement of the power-sharing executive at Stormont. He said he wanted to see a unionist majority "led in a positive and consistent way" but insisted that peoples' "entitlements" under the agreement "cannot be put off until unionism gets its house in shape".
Speaking after his earlier separate talks with Mr Blair, SDLP leader Mr Mark Durkan also insisted the Assembly elections should proceed as planned, saying a postponement would "do nothing to create the confidence that is needed to address the problems".
Mr Durkan said: "There should be no move to postpone or put a question mark over the election date. We don't need more time, we need more effort." The SDLP leader added that he thought this, too, was Mr Blair's view.
Number 10 confirmed this account of yesterday's discussions, saying Mr Blair had no plans to change the date of the election.
At the same time, British sources still appeared to be facing both ways on the issue, adding that their purpose was to get the suspended institutions up-and-running so that the question about the election itself "becomes hypothetical". The Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble, has made a direct linkage between the prior restoration of the Executive and Assembly and the holding of a fresh election, arguing that elections to a still-suspended Assembly would be pointless.
Mr Adams raised with Mr Blair Sinn Féin concerns about whether unionists would be part of any agreement on "acts of completion", were such possible, and whether they would or could sustain their involvement in the institutions if restored. He said he had sought an understanding of what Mr Blair meant by "acts of completion", adding that that process was "not yet complete".
Confirming that a "skeletal outline" approach to some of the issues involved existed, Mr Adams described ongoing negotiations over policing and the transfer of policing and justice powers as "a work in progress".