British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair today said he was prepared to take steps to expel Sinn Féin from the Executive if the IRA did not abide by the ceasefire terms laid down in the House of Commons yesterday.
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But, in a press briefing in London, he also said he believed "the IRA have never been further away from a return to violence.
"There is no doubt at all that if we believe that the ceasefire has been breached - I am not going to speculate that it is going to happen and I believe and hope that it won't - but if we do come to that judgment, then John Reid, the Secretary of State, will put before the Assembly a motion," he said. "There can't be any doubt about that".
He said: "I believe that Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams and the Sinn Féin leadership are committed to this process.
"I know it is frustrating, incidentally, for some parts of the Republicans because they will say, perfectly rightly, look a lot of this violence is coming from loyalists and that is true.
"But the loyalist organisation the UDA is, of course, not on ceasefire. We have made that clear some time ago and they are not in government.
"And therefore there are differences necessarily when you come to look at the position of a party that is linked to a paramilitary organisation and that party is actually in the government," Mr Blair said.
PA