The Deputy First Minister, Mr Seamus Mallon, has described Mr David Trimble's decision not to nominate Sinn Fein Ministers to the North-South Ministerial Council as "deliberate provocation" to nationalists and republicans. Mr Mallon said the decision to effectively bar Sinn Fein representatives from attending council meetings until the IRA moved on arms was "unacceptable".
The SDLP deputy leader said the UUP leader's proposal appeared to be in breach of the Belfast Agreement.
"The whole basis of the agreement is that it is inclusive in nature," he said.
"The reported decision not to nominate Sinn Fein Ministers to the North-South Ministerial Council seeks to establish different classes of ministers, which is unacceptable," he said.
Mr Mallon said there were no grounds for treating Sinn Fein Ministers, Mr Martin McGuinness and Ms Bairbre de Brun, differently from other ministers of other parties under the terms of the agreement.
"The way in which the decision has been reported suggests to me that this is deliberate provocation to nationalists and republicans."
Mr Mallon said the legal implications of Mr Trimble's proposal - outlined at the Ulster Unionist Council meeting on Saturday - needed to be examined as a matter of urgency in order to determine whether it contravened the terms of the agreement.
The Deputy First Minister said the UUC had no right to intervene in the work of the Independent International Com mission on Decommissioning. He called on the unionists not to place demands on the decommissioning body, which is appointed by and reports to both the British and Irish governments.
"All the parties agreed, at the end of the Mitchell Review, that the Commission itself would be responsible for the methodology and timing of decommissioning," he said.
"These are not matters that the Ulster Unionist Council can determine." Pointing to the Programme for Government and budget drafts put forward by the Assembly in the past fortnight, Mr Mallon said the various institutions set up under the agreement were working well.
"These are huge achievements which many believed we would never see.
"They were achieved by all ministers taking decisions in the Executive on the same basis," he said.
"The Executive needs to work on the basis of trust and not division. There are no grounds for treating some ministers differently from others in the institutions of the agreement."
