The Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble, insisted last night that as far as he was concerned "this is a review whether you call it that or not", after emerging from talks at Downing Street with the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, and the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern.
His assessment of his contacts with the two governments came after a series of crisis talks at Downing Street during which Mr Blair and Mr Ahern and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, and the Northern Ireland Secretary, Mr Peter Mandelson, also held talks with Sinn Fein and the SDLP to chart a way forward through the decommissioning impasse.
Mr Trimble told reporters that the onus was on the republican movement to resolve the issue of decommissioning so that the executive and the other institutions under the Belfast Agreement could be reformed. He said the Ulster Unionists had done all they could to make the Belfast Agreement work.
"The onus is fairly and squarely on the republican movement to put forward proposals as to how this is going to work. Proposals that have some possibility of enabling us to make progress. The ball is still firmly in their court," he said.
Republicans had "failed to deliver" on their obligations to decommission under the terms of the Belfast Agreement. "The onus is on them and they have got to come forward," he added.
Asked whether in the absence of movement on the decommissioning issue from SF/IRA there would be no self-government in Northern Ireland, Mr Trimble replied: "We obviously were prepared to see devolution, that's why we stretched ourselves so far. But we've stretched ourselves to, and maybe even beyond, the limit that was possible. The onus rests with them."
He said a review process would continue with inter-party talks to discuss how the political parties could cope with the failure of Sinn Fein to honour its commitments under the Belfast Agreement. He wanted to see from Sinn Fein "something that is going to work".
He was not interested, he said "in cobbling together formulae which enable you to just stagger on for a week or two. We want this sorted out once and for all so that when we re-form the institutions they are there to operate permanently."