Sinn Fein has welcomed as "the correct decision" the announcement by the Northern Secretary that the IRA ceasefire has not broken down sufficiently to penalise the organisation.
As the September review of the Belfast Agreement approaches, Sinn Fein representatives yesterday urged that the agreement be implemented in full. The party's senior negotiator, Mr Martin McGuinness, said it was now necessary to show that the political process could work.
"Sinn Fein has been saying for some time now that we believe the IRA ceasefire is intact. I think it is absolutely vital and essential that all politicians press on now to show that politics is working, to show that the way forward for all of us is the implementation of the agreement we signed up to last year."
Mr McGuinness said talk of excluding the party from the coming review should now cease.
"I do think that unionists would be much more constructively employed if they moved away from a strategy of trying to drag up every excuse imaginable in order to exclude a very sizeable Sinn Fein mandate."
The Sinn Fein leadership had taken risks in the peace process, made compromises and successfully brought party supporters along a road that is "far from comfortable for them", he added.
Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, the Sinn Fein chairman, said Dr Mowlam had taken the only decision open to her. "Mo Mowlam could have taken a different approach and I think there was the real potential of exacerbating the existing difficulties.
In a statement, Mr McLaughlin described the decision as the correct one because it was patently obvious the IRA cessation was still intact.
"In our view there are a number of outstanding issues to be resolved. This can only be done in the context of an open and democratic political process. Both the unionists and the British government have a responsibility in all of this, to work alongside Sinn Fein and the other parties to ensure progress is made on all fronts."
Mr McLaughlin acknowledged the suffering of families who had lost a member to paramilitary violence, such as the family of Charles Bennett.
Dr Mowlam confirmed yesterday that members of the Provisional IRA killed Mr Bennett in west Belfast last month.
It also emerged last month that IRA members were involved in a US-based gun procurement operation.
"There has been some progress in terms of this project of eradicating violence from our society, violence that emerges from all sections of our community. Progress is being made, has been made, but more work remains to be done," said Mr McLaughlin.
"Yes, let's recognise that there are families out there that are suffering terribly and let's recognise the fact that that continues to reflect the political failure," he added. Mr McLaughlin called on unionist politicians to end their "ambiguous" stance on loyalist violence, and said there was "no acceptable violence".
"If people continue to take a very sectional approach and if people continue to reflect an ambiguity about violence that emanates from their own constituencies, then I think we will never solve the problem."