Former British prime minister Sir John Major has rejected criticism by Northern Secretary Peter Hain that he mishandled the peace process, thus leading to the breakdown of the first IRA ceasefire.
There "would have been no peace process" without the careful nurturing of the situation by his government before 1997.
The IRA broke its cessation, called on August 31st, 1994, in February 1996 when it detonated a bomb at London's Canary Wharf, killing two men.
Mr Hain said Sir John's government had failed to interpret the republican position.
However Sir John accused the Northern Secretary, a candidate for deputy leader of the British Labour Party, of having an incomplete understanding of the situation in the early days of the peace process. Sir John defended his position on the BBC Politics Show.
"It was always a process - like building a Rubik's cube. It needed all sides to be kept in play. Any side - the unionist side or the republican side - could have broken this process at any time."
He suggested Mr Hain did not understand the delicacy of the situation, especially the unionist fear that republicans would return to violence. "Perhaps his historical memory doesn't understand it.
"If it hadn't been an article of faith that weapons were removed, the unionists would never have sat down at the table with republicans with the belief that a gun was underneath the table the moment something happened to encourage them to return to it.
"They would never have sat down together, there would have been no peace process."
The IRA ceasefire was formally restored in July 1997 ahead of the negotiations that led to the conclusion of the Belfast Agreement on Good Friday 1998.