The Sinn Fein President, Mr Gerry Adams, has described the report of the International Monitoring Commission (IMC) as a "partisan" report and "a sham".
Mr Adams was responding to the report's findings at a party rally in Dublin. Reading from a prepared script Mr Adams accused the British and Irish governments of "using the IMC to actively subvert democratic wishes and entitlements". Mr Adams refused to answer questions from the media. He will "make himself available" to the media tomorrow morning, reporters heard.
The IMC report claimed leading members of Sinn Féin are operating at the highest echelons of the IRA. Because of this alleged crossover between politics and paramilitarism Sinn Fein faces financial sanctions, as does the Progressive Unionist Party (PUP).
The penalties, which have yet to be finalised, will be taken from the £120,000 sterling paid annually to Sinn Féin and the £27,000 given to PUP. The IMC report also threatened to hold paramilitary chiefs publicly to account in future reports.
Mr Adams this evening said the IMC was "not independent".
"The Commission's report is a proxy report by the securocrats which recommends sanctions against Sinn Féin - despite the clear fact that we are not in any way in breach of the [Belfast] Agreement, nor did they suggest we were," he added. He said the "duplicity" and "double standards" in the report were outrageous.
"Sinn Féin will not accept this partisan report. We will not accept this attack on our integrity. We will not accept this attack on our electoral mandate.
"We will challenge it by every means at our disposal and at every door we go to in the upcoming election campaign here in the south. We will also put responsibility for the current crisis precisely where it belongs - with the two governments. The Commission, after all, is the child of the two governments. It is only doing what it was set up to do. Its report is a sham."
Mr Adams said he looked forward on the basis of the Belfast Agreement with the Taoiseach, but this meant the Government "need to step up to the mark".
"It needs to stop allowing the British government to set the agenda in the peace process. It needs to stop setting the Good Friday Agreement and the rights and entitlements of nationalists and republicans aside at the whim of unionists - whether it is David Trimble or Ian Paisley."