THE Sinn Fein leader should not be pressed to condemn Friday's bombing in London, Conservative MP Mr Peter Temple Morris said yesterday.
The success of peace process talks depended upon Mr Gerry Adams's "effective representation of the IRA via Sinn Fein."
"You can't expect him to condemn his own constituency - to condemn the very reason why he is talking to you in the first place", Mr Temple Morris said.
If you demand that from him you basically negate the whole peace process, and in neutering Adams and co. you invite something far more extreme to take their places."
Mr Temple Morris, a member of the Anglo Irish inter parliamentary conference, said Sinn Fein would have to be involved in any future talks.
"There's no point in playing Hamlet without the prince," he told the Dublin radio station Anna Livia.
Mr Temple Morris said an earlier return to violence had been averted by President Clinton's visit, at a time when the British and Irish governments' positions had been moving apart.
However, the publication of the Mitchell report and the renewed divergence of the two governments "set the seal on what has sadly happened."
He added that, while both governments "have to sound tough on violence and tough on terrorism, I don't think that what they've said actually is not recoverable in terms of a peace process."