Ulster Unionists have made it more difficult for republicans to move the peace process forward by adopting an "absolutist position", Sinn Fein president Mr Gerry Adams said today.
Mr Adams insisted, ahead of a meeting with UUP leader David Trimble at Stormont, that republicans wanted to achieve the removal of all armed groups in the North.
However he said the UUP's rejection last Friday of the Irish and British governments' plan for the peace process meant the party had set its stall against "element after element" of the Belfast Agreement.
The West Belfast MP said: "What we have been able to deliver is a process, albeit an imperfect one, but far better than there was before.
"We can still deliver a process but there is only so much one party in this process can do on its own when there are so many difficulties being raised.
"I have looked at the UUP position last Friday and I see the rejection of element after element after element of aspects of the Good Friday Agreement.
"The UUP wants to see the IRA going away and Sinn Fein's peace strategy is to achieve that objective.
"But at the same time they want that to happen, they do not want to see the British Army go away and the RIR (Royal Irish Regiment) retained."
PA