The Alliance and Ulster Unionist parties last night accused each other of jeopardising the pro-agreement cause as any chance of an electoral pact between them faded almost to nothing.
The UUP wants Alliance to stand aside in South Antrim, where Mr David Burnside will try to retake the seat lost to the Rev William McCrea in a by-election last year, as well as in North Down, Strangford and East Belfast.
It is believed Alliance, which had already withdrawn from five constituencies, offered to withdraw from all except East Belfast if the UUP would give it a clear run against the DUP deputy leader, Mr Peter Robinson.
This was rejected by the UUP, whose leader, Mr David Trimble, said: "In each of these constituencies, all Alliance is capable of doing is handing the seat to reactionaries."
Alliance had cost the UUP the South Antrim by-election, he said, and he urged its leader, Mr Sean Neeson, not to make the same mistake again.
"The Alliance Party has to consider whether it puts the interests of Northern Ireland first or party interests first," he said. "Is Sean Neeson voting for Willie McCrea? Because, at the moment, that's what his party is doing by running a candidate in South Antrim." Mr Neeson had earlier said he was open to talks with the UUP but his party's response was as bellicose as Mr Trimble's. He said that if Mr Trimble "does not accept that he also has a role to play in saving the agreement, then he should accept that Alliance is going to stand against his candidates".
Mr David Ford, the Alliance candidate in South Antrim, said it had been looking to establish a "broad-based, pro-agreement understanding".
However, Mr Burnside was clearly not a pro-agreement candidate and he said he did not see how such a candidate "could possibly figure within that understanding".
A smaller anti-agreement party, the Northern Ireland Unionist Party, said it would also be running candidates in Strangford and South Antrim.
In South Antrim, the NIUP candidate, Mr Norman Boyd, polled 4,360 in the Assembly elections and did not contest last year's by-election, which the DUP won by only 882 votes.
A leaked final draft of the UUP manifesto said the future of power-sharing government in the North was threatened by the continued failure of paramilitaries to "indicate demonstrably" through decommissioning that their campaigns were over.
Meanwhile, the SDLP's deputy leader said he believed the UUP would not be routed in the election.
Speaking at the launching of his party's campaign, Mr Seamus Mallon conceded that the UUP "have problems, big problems". However, he said the UUP could improve its prospects by clarifying its position on the agreement.
"I do not think there will be a rout of the Ulster Unionist Party and I have believed that from the beginning," Mr Mallon said.
The Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, predicted his party's MPs would be allowed to use facilities at Westminster after the election but he refused to comment on whether he had been given such assurances by the British government. "I don't want to go any further than I've gone except to say that we have talked to the British government about all of this at the very highest level and we intend to pursue this matter," he said.
The DUP deputy leader has called on Mr Trimble to resign from his post as First Minister after the Government brought its legislation on the amnesty period for paramilitary disarmament into line with Britain's. The amnesty rules in the 1997 Decommissioning Act were extended until February 2002 instead of next Tuesday.
Mr Peter Robinson claimed the move was evidence that the two governments did not believe the IRA would disarm by Mr Trimble's resignation deadline of July 1st.
"They obviously do not expect the IRA to deliver by then and, if that's the case, then why should David Trimble go through this sham of setting a deadline?" Mr Robinson said.
"He should quit now as First Minister as it is clear his so-called mechanism for achieving decommissioning is not going to work."