THE national chairman of Sinn Fein, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin yesterday called on the British government to re-establish contact with Sinn Fein "to see if we can talk our way out of this crisis".
Mr McLaughlin said that imaginative and urgent action from the two governments was needed to break the present cycle.
He said that Sinn Fein was ready to make "a sincere committed and constructive contribution" to finding a negotiated settlement, but could not do that from outside the talks process.
"Those who have responsibility for developing a meaningful negotiation involving all of the par ties are those who exercise political power," Mr McLaughlin said. "I don't think the onus can be put on Sinn Fein unless we are on the same basis and operating on the same level of parity as all the other parties.
"At the moment, Sinn Fein has to make its contribution from outside the process, and it is a process which is clearly failing."
He acknowledged that there had been "some tremendous work" done by loyalist politicians in attempting to hold the line on the loyalist ceasefire. But there had also been a significant level of loyalist activity - a number of Catholics had been killed in very suspicious circumstances.
The Northern Minister for Political Development, Mr Michael Ancram, said the comments by Mr David Ervine of the PUP that the peace process would collapse into full-scale violence were a cause for concern.
"Any comment of that kind is a cause for concern, just as the events of the summer were a cause for concern," he said. But the way out of such concerns was to see that the talks process moved forward constructively towards an accommodation.
Meanwhile, the DUP leader, the Rev Ian Paisley, attacked statements made by the British Labour Party's spokeswoman on Northern Ireland, Ms Mo Mowlam, at the party's conference in Blackpool. Dr Paisley said in a statement: "The Labour Party in Britain has also joined the IRA lobby with Mowlam's statement that IRA-Sinn Fein must be received at the talks without the surrender of one murder weapon.