Sinn Fein has said the British government should consider closing down the Northern Ireland Assembly if Senator George Mitchell's review fails.
The party's chairman, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, said Sinn Fein would not be prepared to sit in the Assembly if it was merely a talking shop. At Stormont after Sinn Fein's negotiators briefed their Assembly party, he said: "We have the ludicrous position in relation to the Assembly at the moment where it cannot even meet. We do have to move to the obvious and the logical conclusion of what people voted for and that is to put in place an executive, to take devolved authority here and for people to do the work that they were actually paid to do."
Mr McLaughlin said his party had acted in good faith by taking part in the Assembly, even though "we had no particular desire to see an Assembly in the first place or to see an executive formed in the North. We are the united Ireland party, but we have accepted the responsibility to manage the political transition . . ."
He said there was "clear and tangible evidence" that the Provisional IRA was committed to the peace process and he noted media reports that the organisation had recently guaranteed the safety of two British soldiers who had fallen into its hands.
However, he warned that the longer a political vacuum was allowed to take hold in the North, the greater the possibility that the conditions of conflict would "reassert" themselves.
Senior SDLP negotiator Mr Mark Durkan described Mr McLaughlin's comments as unhelpful. He said all parties should be focused on "making the review work and we are not going to look past it.
"We need to be concentrating on engendering a shared determination to make this work, not engaging in mutual recrimination."