The DUP has vowed not to hold bilateral meetings with Sinn Féin unless the IRA disbands.
Speaking as the party prepared to meet the Taoiseach in London, Mr Gregory Campbell admitted all parties represented in the suspended Assembly would attend next week's review of the Belfast Agreement. However the East Derry MP insisted there would be no face-to-face meetings while the IRA was in existence.
Sinn Féin, the SDLP and the Ulster Unionists are quick to point out that the DUP does sit with Sinn Féin members on local councils, and on Assembly committees before direct rule was reimposed in October 2002.
Mr Campbell said yesterday: "We will be confronting them there as we have confronted them in the Assembly or in councils, but we will not be holding face-to-face discussions until the IRA has gone.
"Sinn Féin have benefited from the existence of the IRA, and from the violence of the IRA. We will not have discussions with them either by the front door or the back door while they have the prop of violence and use it to elevate themselves over other parties."
Referring to the bomb attack in London's Docklands in 1996 which marked the end of the first IRA ceasefire, Mr Campbell added: "The existence of the IRA has been used by Sinn Féin as some sort of asset or ace card, with the threat of violence or explosions like Canary Wharf used to extract concessions.
"We will talk directly to normal, legitimate democratic parties, but there will be no face-to-face meetings with Sinn Féin till the advantage of them having the IRA has gone."
The Sinn Féin president, Mr Gerry Adams, challenging the DUP to sit down and discuss the construction of a totally peaceful society in which all armed groups, including the IRA, disappeared.
"Sending up preconditions and sitting outside of real dialogue; then it serves no good purpose."