The North's power-sharing Executive will survive the current crisis over decommissioning, the Deputy First Minister has said.
Speaking on the BBC yesterday, Mr Seamus Mallon strongly criticised the decision by Mr David Trimble to bar Sinn Fein Ministers from meetings of the North-South Ministerial Council and said the First Minister was acting against the spirit of the Belfast Agreement.
"It is very clear that what he has done is counter to the Good Friday agreement and counter to the legislation on which it is based," Mr Mallon said.
"It is breaking the programme for government we produced two weeks ago; it is breaking our own ministerial code. I don't think there is any doubt whatsoever that it is a breakage of all our rules in such a way that runs completely against the whole basic thesis of the Good Friday agreement."
Despite this, Mr Mallon said the Executive could survive, as no party wanted to risk another suspension.
Two previous suspensions of the Executive and institutions had provided no resolution of the decommissioning problem, and there was no reason to expect that another would be more successful, said Mr Mallon.
He said he believed that because of this there was a realisation among unionists that Mr Trimble had made an error. "People are beginning to realise this was a tactical mistake by David Trimble," he said. "And I think we'll be able to iron it out.
"I don't believe the body politic could withstand another suspension. You can't simply turn off and turn on the taps of institutions like we have and hope that they will survive. I don't believe they would survive and I don't think it will happen," he said.
On Saturday Mr Trimble conceded that the tactic might not succeed in forcing the IRA to move on decommissioning but said he had had little alternative.
"There is no political approach that is guaranteed success, but this is the best opportunity, the best policy we have in the present circumstances," he said.
"For us to sit back and do nothing in response to the violence, in response to the republican failure to keep their promises, would most assuredly result in the destruction of the agreement."
Mr Trimble admitted that nationalist and republican reaction could send "the whole process going into a downward spiral. But that is their reaction, not mine". He maintained: "What I have done is actually quite limited and quite focused".
Sinn Fein expressed great concern about the sanctions. The party's chief negotiator, Mr Martin McGuinness, said he feared the Belfast Agreement was "hurtling towards destruction".
If the sanctions continued, he warned: "We will be in a very, very serious situation indeed, and I think the Executive will be grievously undermined, the all-Ireland institutions will be grievously undermined and we will face the mother of all crises within this process."
Mr McGuinness said the only way to resolve matters was for "the two governments, particularly the British government, to defend the agreement, something they have singularly failed to do."
The Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, renewed his call on the Northern Secretary to intervene on the barring of Ministers. Mr Adams said his party was serious about taking legal action if necessary but he wanted to give the two governments the opportunity to intervene first. "There is a matter of courtesy involved here," he said.