The Democratic Unionist Party have failed to grasp a unique opportunity to kick-start Northern Ireland's devolved powers, it was claimed today.
Mr Martin McGuinness, Sinn Fein chief negotiator, said it was a shame the DUP refused to engage directly with his party and commit to sharing power.
"The DUP in the course of these last couple of weeks clearly have shown that the major difficulty within this process resides within themselves and the IRA are not the problem," Mr McGuinness said.
The Sinn Fein MLA said Unionists should have grabbed the chance to return to Stormont after the IRA put forward a "superb offer" in order to restart power sharing in Belfast.
"It has now become clear that the Democratic Unionist Party even in the face of what everybody concedes, and the Governments concede, is an unprecedented and historic offer from the IRA leadership that the DUP are not prepared to do the business," he said.
"I don't have any illusions whatsoever that the Governments doubt that it was a very good offer and a very important offer and one which the DUP should have seized on."
"The Governments, both British and Irish have clearly indicated in the course of the last number of weeks that they believe that Republicans are up for a historic and unprecedented contribution to breaking the logjam."
Mr McGuinness told RTE radio it was a shame the DUP failed to respect the views of Republican voters.
"We don't have any problem whatsoever in engaging with the elected representatives of the Unionist people, the difficulty resides on the DUP side," he said.
"If the DUP could bring themselves to recognising the importance of respecting the Sinn Fein mandate then I think we could do the business much more quickly." Mr McGuinness said there were no illusions about where the process was heading.
"It's matter of when, not if we are going to see an agreement," he said.
The Sinn Fein MLA also said the Governments had to take responsibility for driving the process forward until the DUP came on board.