The DUP has said the British-Irish Council (BIC) is insignificant and its establishment is simply a way of disguising the fact that real power lies with the North-South Council.
The party's two ministers, Mr Peter Robinson and Mr Nigel Dodds, did not attend yesterday's meeting in London.
Mr Dodds said: "The North-South Council is all substance. The British-Irish Council is all shadow. The contrast in the powers given to both bodies is another example of how Mr Trimble sold Ulster short in the Belfast Agreement.
"Whereas the North-South Council has real decision-making teeth, the British-Irish Council is purely consultative with no powers. The meeting in London was merely a smoke screen to disguise the reality of where real power lies."
Mr Dodds said the Belfast Agreement ensured that the different levels of power of both bodies were clearly set out, ensuring "that the real power-house would be North-South arrangements with their full range of consultative, harmonising and executive roles."
Mr Dodds said the Inter-Governmental Conference (IGC), which met in London yesterday, was the "renamed Anglo-Irish Conference" which "gives the lie to the notion that the Anglo-Irish Agreement has gone".
He said the IGC's remit "covers the areas of security, policing, prisons and human rights covered under the Anglo-Irish Agreement, with a secretariat being set up to service it. Maryfield may have gone, but only to be relocated elsewhere."