The sense of crisis overshadowing Stormont darkened yesterday with a stark warning from Mr David Trimble to republicans to restore public credibility in the political process.
The Ulster Unionist leader was speaking after a 40-minute meeting with Sinn Féin president Mr Gerry Adams at Stormont.
Mr Trimble had called for the meeting earlier in the week amid rising concern over alleged republican links with the Castlereagh break-in, the Colombia arrests and reports of the IRA targeting of senior Tory figures.
Mr Adams has strenuously denied any IRA and Sinn Féin involvement in any of the controversies. And yesterday he repeated his insistence that the alarm was being generated by British elements opposed to the peace process.
However, Mr Trimble countered by saying: "Nobody in the unionist community believes a word that republicans are saying about recent events. Nobody."
He added that he was not making any threats about boycotts or withdrawals from the institutions. But, he said, "this situation, we pointed out, is rapidly draining away the credibility of this administration, this process".
Mr Adams said there had been no showdown at the meeting between the two parties.
He claimed, however, there was "bitter bewilderment" among Catholics that there should be a sense of crisis following the latest act of IRA decommissioning.
He said he had asked Mr Trimble after the meeting whose interests were best served by the current malaise.
Answering his own question, he said: "It helps those within the British system who wanted this process to fail and, obviously at the same time, it allows anti-agreement elements in unionism to jump on and exploit \ for their own very narrow reasons."