The Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, has claimed his leadership is facing pressure from within party ranks to retaliate over sanctions against its Ministers in the Northern Executive.
Speaking yesterday after meeting the North's Deputy First Minister, Mr Seamus Mallon, Mr Adams indicated he had faced calls for his party to withdraw from the Executive in protest at the Ulster Unionist ban on Mr Martin McGuinness and Ms Bairbre de Brun attending North-South Ministerial Council meetings.
"A number of propositions have been put to me about taking radical action," Mr Adams said. "This isn't just about stopping these two particular Ministers from performing their functions, although that is bad enough.
"It isn't only about preventing the Health Minister from engaging in issues which could actually save people's lives, or the Education Minister being able to put together policies that could benefit our young people.
"It also prevents the Deputy First Minister from doing his job. It prevents the Taoiseach from doing his job. It prevents, through the British-Irish Council, the British Prime Minister from doing his job.
"Radical action would involve the party considering - and we have had propositions put to us which I have knocked firmly back - a withdrawal, in some way trying to tell the governments you have a responsibility to act as guarantors."
Mr Adams said he thought such retaliation would be counterproductive.
The North's First Minister, Mr David Trimble, initiated the ban on Sinn Fein Ministers in protest at the Provisional IRA's failure to move on decommissioning. Belfast High Court ruled it was illegal, but Mr Trimble is appealing the judgment.
Mr Adams has requested a meeting with Mr Trimble. After his talk with Mr Adams, Mr Mallon said all ministers should be allowed to carry out their duties in full.
The ban was "a serious default" to the workings of the political institutions set up under the Belfast Agreement. "I want to put that default right. We all have vetoes in this situation. Mr Trimble has a veto. I have a veto. Every single party in the Executive has its own veto, but that is negative equity," Mr Mallon said.
"That will never ensure the workings of the agreement, nor will it ever ensure that those things that we have agreed will properly reach their potential."
Meanwhile, Sinn Fein has contrasted the voluntary ban on using plastic bullets in London with the situation in the North. The Metropolitan Police had said plastic bullets would not be used yesterday.
A Sinn Fein Assembly member, Ms Michelle Gildernew, said: "For years the British government has unleashed the RUC and the British army to fire plastic bullets at unarmed civilians. This practice has resulted in the deaths of innocent men, women and children."
Unionists have criticised the decision by the Police Ombudsman, Ms Nuala O'Loan, to investigate the firing of a plastic bullet during a riot in Lurgan, Co Armagh, last week.
The disturbances followed a bomb alert on the Belfast-Dublin rail link in the town.