The IRA is not going to respond to any "surrender" demand from the DUP or its leader, the Rev Ian Paisley, the Sinn Féin president Mr Gerry Adams told the party's Easter Rising commemoration in Dublin yesterday.
Mr Adams said Sinn Féin would engage positively in the intensive round of negotiations in London later this month that the British and Irish governments have called in a renewed effort to restore devolution.
He said Sinn Féin respected the DUP mandate but that in these negotiations the DUP must respect Sinn Féin's by dealing with them directly.
"Sinn Féin is strong enough and big enough and confident enough in our own politics to talk to anyone. In fact we have a duty to do so. So do the DUP," said Mr Adams.
"But like John Major at the start of this process, the DUP is demanding that the IRA publicly surrender before the DUP will even sit down and talk to Sinn Féin. Can anyone imagine the IRA dashing off to obey the DUP diktat?
"Does Mr Paisley imagine that P O'Neill was just waiting for this demand from him? Surely wiser counsel will know that a sensible approach is about dealing with these issues collectively.
"So the DUP's current public position will not resolve the difficulties in the process and no one in the British or Irish governments should pretend that it will, not if Mr Blair is serious when he warns that this process cannot stand still," said Mr Adams.
"The unionists, but especially the DUP, have to know that although they can refuse to work the institutions, they will have no veto over the many other matters of human rights and equality, policing and demilitarisation, of rights and entitlements," he added.
Mr Adams paid tribute to the IRA, as did other Sinn Féin speakers, such as Mr Martin McGuinness and Mr Gerry Kelly, at other Easter commemorations around the country. Mr Adams said the IRA played a "positive and constructive role" in "creating and sustaining the conditions of the peace process".
He said republicans were totally wedded to "building justice and peace" in Ireland. "Let me make it clear that the Sinn Féin leadership is prepared to enter once again into new intense negotiations. We are prepared once again to do our best to make this process work," he said.
Mr Adams said blaming republicans for the current stalemate would not create the proper atmosphere for serious negotiations. "If the governments are serious about this peace process then they need to convince republicans and nationalists. This requires actions not words."
He said the two governments must honour commitments made last October when the sequenced deal designed to restore devolution was cut short.
"Let us be clear. Both governments entered into commitments, covering a wide range of issues from prisoners, through policing, demilitarisation, northern representation in southern institutions, equality, human rights matters and more. There was to be immediate and substantial progress on all of these. There was none," he said.
"Instead we have the continued suspension of the institutions of the Good Friday agreement, a totally unacceptable situation."
Mr Adams described the forthcoming citizenship referendum as "bogus and racist" and virtually guaranteed that race would become an election issue.
"This is a complex and sensitive issue, which the government is cynically exploiting," said Mr Adams.
