A bid by hardline unionists to have a motion of no confidence in Sinn Féinminister Martin McGuinness passed this week in the Northern Ireland Assembly has been thwarted.
Members of the SDLP have joined forces with Sinn Féin to lodge a "petition of concern" forcing a cross-community vote in the chamber on Tuesday.
The move means the motion by the Rev Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists has virtually no chance of passing.
To succeed, it would have to attract an overall 60 per cent majority in the chamber and at least 40 per cent on both the unionist and nationalist benches.
The motion would fall if opposed by the SDLP and Sinn Féin.
The DUP's Peter Robinson and Nigel Dodds tabled the motion of no confidence after Mr McGuinness admitted in a faxed statement to the Bloody Sunday Inquiry he was the IRA's second-in-command in Derry at the time of the shootings.
The party claimed if the motion was passed, Northern Ireland First Minister David Trimble would have to put forward an exclusion motion before the Assembly to force the education minister out of office.
But the SDLP's deputy chief whip in the Assembly, Dr Alasdair McDonnell, confirmed his party had moved with Sinn Féin to force a cross-community vote - a tactic deployed against a DUP bid last July to oust Mr McGuinness and Sinn Féinhealth minister Bairbre de Brún.
PA