THE CHIEF Sinn Fein negotiator with the British government, Mr Martin McGuinness, said last night that his party was conditionally willing to go back to the IRA to ask for a second ceasefire.
He told a packed lecture hall at Magee College in Derry "We are prepared to go back again to the IRA and ask for a second cessation, but this time we can only do that if we can be assured that all the preconditions have been swept out of the road.
"This time we can only do that if we can be absolutely certain that all party peace negotiations will begin. We are prepared to do that, but there is no guarantee that we can get a second IRA cessation.
"But we can try. We are prepared to try again, but there needs to be a fundamental change in thinking by the British government and by the leaders of unionism. If there isn't, then we are facing a disaster.
"The danger about saying that is that your political opponents will say there goes McGuinness threatening again". I am not threatening anybody. What I am stating is a fact which everyone deep down knows is a truism if you do not tackle, address and resolve all of the issues at the heart of the conflict in this country, then there will always be the potential for further conflict.
"We want to remove that potential. I don't want to see any more Ed O'Briens killed. I don't want to see any more people going to prison. I don't want to see any more British soldiers being killed, no members of the RUC, no members of the loyalist death squads, no English people killed.
"We've had 25 years and all we are asking is for all the political representatives and the other parties to recognise that it is time to sit down and talk about the future of this country, to recognise that there is going to have to be give and take on all sides.
"We are prepared to make compromises, we are prepared for give and take, but what we are not prepared for is to live out the next 25 years with our people being treated as second class citizens. We cannot live like that and no one should expect us to do that", he said.
Sinn Fein was still committed to a peaceful resolution of the Northern conflict, he emphasised.