Sinn Féin president Mr Gerry Adams said yesterday that London and Dublin must now decide whether the Belfast Agreement or the Democratic Unionist Party is to prevail in Northern Ireland.
This was his gently spoken but very sharp challenge to both governments yesterday, as the two parties continued to position themselves ahead of next week's scheduled talks at Leeds Castle in Kent.
In setting his September deadline, the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, said the talks must mark "the point of decision" about the future direction of the political process in Northern Ireland, and indicated that London and Dublin would have to consider the alternatives if the DUP and Sinn Féin could not agree the basis for the restoration of the Stormont Assembly and Executive.
Speaking at a press conference in the Palace of Westminster, Mr Adams said he did not rule out progress at the talks, at which Mr Blair and the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, will preside.
He repeated his prediction that the DUP would eventually do business with Sinn Féin.
However, he could not say when that would be, and warned both governments that the DUP's publicly declared position on IRA disarmament was "totally contrary to the Good Friday agreement."
Mr Adams said: "The DUP have been honest - they want to destroy the Good Friday agreement.
"So if you ask me for my expectation - if the publicly expressed position of the DUP is to destroy the agreement - then the prospects of progress in terms of seeing that agreement implemented are totally reliant upon a British government bringing unionists through the pain barrier and on them reconciling themselves to, or coming to tolerate, a new dispensation."
The Sinn Féin president added: "It is a matter of whether the Good Friday agreement prevails or the position of the DUP prevails, and that again is a question for the Taoiseach and for the British Prime Minister."
Senior DUP sources last night told The Irish Times they still believed agreement was possible at Leeds Castle, although the party's declared requirements in terms of future reports by the Independent Monitoring Commission and the International Decommissioning Commission suggest a power-sharing administration could not be restored before mid-March at the earliest.
Moreover, Mr Adams's comments would suggest that his party is not ready to move from its strict interpretation of the arrangements for handling the decommissioning issue which led to the failure of its negotiation with the Ulster Unionists prior to last November's Assembly election.
"The issue of arms has to be dealt with. I want to see it dealt with," he said.
"The agreement established a commission to do just that, and made it very clear that that was not a precondition for the holding of ministerial office or for the recognition of democratic mandates," he said.
During a two-day book promotional visit to London in which he was expected to have further discussions with senior Downing Street officials, Mr Adams suggested that "the issue of arms" would be successfully dealt with only in the context of "a process of sustainable change".