Unionists have strongly criticised yesterday's IRA statement, while other parties and the British government have called it "unhelpful".
The Ulster Unionist Party leader, Mr David Trimble, who was meeting the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, at Downing Street yesterday, described the statement as "menacing". It indicated that the IRA would not decommission its arms and that Sinn Fein had tried to "lead everybody up the garden path".
A member of the UUP negotiating team, Sir Reg Empey, called the statement a "thinly-veiled threat".
In keeping with policy, the Taoiseach declined comment on the IRA statement, except to say the Government was "neither encouraged nor discouraged about what we heard overnight".
Contacts with the Northern parties this week had been positive, he insisted, as he arrived at Dublin Castle yesterday to address a conference of civil servants.
Mr Martin McGuinness of Sinn Fein told RTE radio that the failure to implement the Belfast Agreement in full had effectively "cheated" people of 14 months of progress.
"It doesn't take a genius to work out it is going to be nigh impossible to bring about decommissioning by May 2000. I think many people could be forgiven for thinking there is no likelihood whatsoever of there being an executive, not this year or next," he added.
He insisted that the onus lay with Mr Blair to break the deadlock by forcing unionists to give way.
Speaking in Washington where she was briefing US politicians on the peace process, the Northern Secretary, Dr Mo Mowlam, said the IRA statement was "unhelpful because it shows the degree of mistrust that exists and it probably fuels that mistrust".
The SDLP called the statement "abrupt and unhelpful". An Assembly member, Mr Alex Attwood, told the BBC: "I think they are repeating outworn republican dogma. It is indulging their own constituency."
But he added: "What republicans say and what they do is often different and therefore I would urge both governments not to draw definite conclusions about what appears to be a rather abrupt and unhelpful statement."
Gen John de Chastelain yesterday said decommissioning of all paramilitary weapons by next May was still a possibility. Asked to comment on Mr McGuinness's view that this date was now "nigh impossible", the chairman of the International Commission on Decommissioning said: "I have to believe it is possible."