If the Good Friday Agreement is not defended the British and Irish governments must move on over the heads of anti-Agreement parties, Sinn Fein insisted today.
Speaking in Dublin after the party's first committee meeting of the new year, chief negotiator Mr Martin McGuinness said it was vital that the Agreement was supported and not undermined, in the course of the upcoming review.
He said Sinn Fein was prepared to listen to what Reverend Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party had to say but that the priority must be to defend the progress made over the last ten years.
"There is obviously going to be an exploration of the DUP's position in the coming weeks and we will listen very carefully to what Ian Paisley is saying," he said.
"We have made it absolutely clear that we want to talk to the DUP just as we have spoken to all unionist representatives in the past.
"Logically, what we now need to see is the contingency plan approach," he added.
But the Mid-Ulster MP said if it emerges that the DUP's position is still to "wreck" the Good Friday Agreement and that they remain dedicated to the destruction of the institution, action would have to be taken.
"There will be an absolutely massive responsibility for the British and Irish governments and the pro-Agreement parties to move ahead, and move ahead over the heads of unionist, rejectionist extremists who are bent on the destruction of all of the work that we have been engaged in over the course of the last ten years," he said.
"We will not under any circumstances allow that to happen and the DUP need to take account of that."
He reiterated that there were only 34 members of the Northern Ireland Assembly opposed to the Agreement and that the 74 in favour of it represented a very strong and powerful hand.
"Why should we allow the Reverend Ian Paisley and the unionist extremists that he leads to overturn an Agreement that has been endorsed overwhelmingly by all of the citizens of this island?