Sinn Féin President Mr Gerry Adams has told the Taoiseach that his party was not involved in intelligence gathering in Stormont. Mr Adams met Mr Ahern in emergency talks in Dublin this evening as power sharing in the North headed towards collapse.
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Rev Ian Paisley: Call for Unionist walk-out from Assmebly
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It emerged earlier the Democratic Unionists Party (DUP) will tomorrow announce the resignation of its two ministers from the Executive following Friday's police raids on Sinn Féin's Stormont offices.
According to DUP sources the party's leader Dr Ian Paisley will make the announcement tomorrow that his ministers Mr Peter Robinson and Mr Nigel Dodds will leave the administration some time this week.
Earlier Dr Paisley called for a mass Unionist walkout from the Executive.
The party has tabled a motion to exclude Sinn Féin Ministers from the Executive which will be debated in the Assembly tomorrow. Earlier this morning, Ulster Unionist leader Mr Trimble accused Sinn Féin of "political conspiracy on a massive scale".
Referring to the allegations against Sinn Féin's chief Stormont administrator, Mr Denis Donaldson, who was last night charged with having confidential details of members of the police and British soldiers, Mr Trimble said "the smoking gun was now evident" and that "this conspiracy was ten times worse than Watergate".
But speaking after his meeting with Mr Ahern, Mr Adams said Republicans would have been stupid to be involved intelligence gathering while they were trying to keep the Northern Ireland government up and running.
He said: "If there is a crisis, in any crisis, whether it's a contrived crisis or a real crisis, then it goes over to the people to decide what the outcome should be, and there shouldn't be any sort of a structure which has some sort of super referee from London coming in to take away from the natives whatever little political structure that they have bestowed on us.
"If I was a Unionist I would have grave concerns but it is still my view that there is a solid block of Unionists there that want this process to work." He said that as one of the architects of the agreement Mr Ahern knew the importance of keeping the institutions and minimising any difficulties that could be created by the Unionists' position in the time ahead.
Mr Adams has described the situation as political theatre designed to tie Sinn Féin to the murky world of British securocratism.
He said it was a conspiracy hatched by Unionists to allow them to blame his party for the collapse of the Executive. "The situation is business as usual for us," he said. "Let's not get carried away with all this".
Mr Ahern earlier renewed his call to the various political leaders in the North to maintain calm in the wake of the latest developments.
While accepting the potential threat to the peace process posed by the weekend's events, Mr Ahern urged caution and reflection by all parties.
"It is not a time to be judgemental," he said. "It's a time for us to be fairly clear-sighted, not just about the short term but about the longer term and see how we can manage this."
The North's Chief Constable, Mr Hugh Orde, today however expressed reservations about the substance and style of the police raids on Sinn Féin offices on Friday. Mr Orde said the operation could have been handled in a more sensitive and appropriate manner. However, he said the offices needed to be searched.
"I regret the way it was done," he said. "What I would stress, however, is the need to carry out that search was absolute in my mind. If we had not done that, we would have left ourselves open to criticism."
The Deputy First Minister Mr Mark Durkan of the SDLP was sceptical about the DUP's threat to pull its two ministers out, claiming they were "trying to steal a march" on the Ulster Unionists.
He said: "We just have to wait and see whether or not this is true.
"The fact is we have had some competition from different unionists in who is going to be first in what is almost a case of playing leapfrog on quicksand.
"The fact is that I do not believe that resignations or bringing devolution to a halt are the way to deal with serious questions.
"Yes, there are serious issues there but they are not going to be dealt with by fruitless tactics."
Additional reporting PA