SINN Fein leaders accused both Mr Major and Mr Bruton of abandoning the peace process at the annual Wolfe Tone commemoration in Bodenstown yesterday.
In a keynote speech to several hundred republicans, however, Sinn Fein's publicity director, Ms Rita O'Hare, insisted the party was still committed to its peace strategy. "The task of restoring the peace process remains to be done and republicans will not shirk that task," she said.
Speaking after the commemoration, Mr Martin McGuinness said the Taoiseach had "worked against" the peace process he inherited. He said Mr Bruton in March 1995 agreed with the British government's position on decommissioning, a strategy which the British deployed to effectively hold up the peace process for 18 months".
The Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, said: "It appears that the Taoiseach is giving up on the peace process. It appears that he has either got as much as he thinks he is going to get or as much as he wants to get from Mr Major ... I don't think anyone can move away or walk away from the peace process.
Earlier, Mr McGuinness said: "I think it would be an unforgivable act of moral cowardice for any government or any political party to walk away from the attempts which are being made to restore a real and meaningful peace process.
"I think it is very important that people understand that there is still an opportunity, in the opinion of Irish republicans, to restore the peace process.
"What is required is an acceptance by everybody that the previous opportunity that was created . . . was destroyed by the British Prime Minister, John Major. That peace process, if it is to be restored, needs the wholehearted and decisive involvement of this British government."
He asked why the British government had cut off all contacts with republicans since February, when it had contacts with them at the height of the IRA campaign;
Mr McGuinness said the British government was "content to pass the baton of obstacle-building from themselves to the unionist political leadership. That's why the talks ... are seen by many people as nothing but an absolute shambles.
He said some people in the Republic, the "Mary Harneys", "Proinsias De Rossas" and "the John Brutons of this world . . . have never been in favour of the peace process from the very be ginning". He thought "John Bruton allegedly said he became involved in this against his better instincts".
Mr McGuinness said he not did think the arms find in Co Laois made it more difficult for the Government to talk to Sinn Fein. "I think it makes it more urgent. The Irish Government has no difficulty in sitting in Stormont with people who have [seen] members of their delegation arrested in Britain on charges of procuring weapons to use to kill Irish Catholics in the North.
"The Irish Government has no difficulty in sitting with the political representatives of people who stole £1 million for the purposes of rearming their arsenals in Belfast some months ago."
Mr Adams said he "was not going to speculate" on the explosives find in Co Laois. "It all has to be seen within the context of the end of the IRA cessation last February. What we need to do is to work together to restore the peace process and to get it back upon the rails."
Asking him to condemn the IRA was not going to advance the process, Mr Adams continued. "What sense do those types of daily, recriminatory, personalised rebukes make?"
IF republicans are disheartened by recent events, they gave no sign of it at their triumphal procession to the grave of Wolfe Tone at Bodenstown yesterday, a much larger affair than in recent years.
One of the biggest cheers came when the name of Eddie O'Brien was read out from the podium during a republican roll call of honour. O'Brien, from Co Wexford, died when the bomb he was carrying exploded prematurely on a London bus shortly after the IRA ended its ceasefire in February.
The chairman of Dublin Sinn Fein, Sean Crow, named other "volunteers" who died over the past year.
He was cheered when he echoed a statement Gerry Adams made last year. "You cannot keep us out for ever, Mr Major, and you know we haven't gone away," he said.
But the biggest response was for Rita O'Hare, when she said she would remind Proinsias De Rossa and Mary Harney "that more Irish citizens voted for our party than for their two parties put together".
That raised a louder cheer than the one for Eddie O'Brien.