Pro-unionist elements within the British government are dictating British peace process strategy, Sinn Féin vice-president Mr Pat Doherty said today.
Mr Doherty told a conference on national self-determination in Switzerland that if Mr Blair remained dependent on these elements during next month's negotiations in Leeds Castle in Maidstone then the prospects of a deal were not good.
"The British state in the North is a unionist state," he said. "Its symbols and emblems are unionist. So are its agencies . . . and its management especially the Northern Ireland Office - the NIO.
"These are the elements that Mr Blair is depending on to implement his policy on Ireland", Mr Doherty added.
"We are told that the British and Irish governments have a common strategy. It is the Good Friday Agreement. The governments are as one on this issue," Mr Doherty said.
"But the Good Friday Agreement, in its essence, is about changing the north of Ireland so that it becomes a shared place for the people who live here. As part of this, its agencies, its management, have to stop being exclusively unionist," he said.
"The best way to secure all of our futures is for the British to make a new strategic alliance with Irish nationalism and republicanism. Unionism's future, and this is at the core of the Good Friday Agreement, is with the rest of the people of Ireland in terms freely entered into by all of us."
Mr Doherty told the conference, organised by the International Human Rights Association of American Minorities and the International Council for Human Rights, that if British policy was the Belfast Agreement and it was to be meaningful, then the two governments would have to produce a common strategy to implement it in full.