The Republican movement has not yet done enough to earn the right to see the Northern Ireland Assembly recalled and a new executive formed, Ulster Unionist leader Mr David Trimble said tonight.
Speaking at a fringe meeting at the Conservative Party's annual conference in Blackpool, Mr Trimble reminded his audience that in October last year the British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair called for the completion of the transition to exclusively peaceful means in Northern Ireland politics.
Mr Trimble said: "In the year since then we have been waiting to see if Republicans would deliver those acts of completion.
"There was an effort made in March and April but they did not come up to the mark. They were offering substantial decommissioning, they were offering some assurances about their future conduct, but the assurances were not good enough.
"There is another effort under way at the moment.
"We are getting indications from Republicans that they are anxious to have political progress, to create circumstances where the Assembly can be recalled, and elections take place and the Assembly reformed and an administration grow out of that.
"But it does not seem to us at the moment that they are offering anything more than the same elements there were in April, namely decommissioning, some assurances for the future but not the critical assurance that there is going to be a complete end to all paramilitary activity and the winding up of the paramilitary organisations.
"They have not come up to the bar."
Mr Trimble said his party would continue to talk to Republicans in an effort to make progress.
During a question and answer session, Mr Trimble was asked whether he was in a position to deliver up Protestant paramilitarism.
He said: "We cannot deliver it because we do not control it.
"We are speaking to some of the people involved to bring home to them the need to change."
PA