The Minister for Foreign Affairs and the Northern Secretary were forced to abandon plans to host round-table talks at Stormont yesterday afternoon on how to inject some impetus into the stalled Northern political process.
Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams accused the British and Irish governments of "pandering to the DUP", after Dermot Ahern and Peter Hain tried to engineer a situation where parties would discuss face-to-face how to break out of the political logjam.
They proposed that talks involving the DUP, SDLP, Ulster Unionists, Alliance and the Progressive Unionist Party should take place first, with Sinn Féin excluded because the Rev Ian Paisley will not deal directly with Mr Adams.
After this session of talks was concluded, it was proposed that the DUP would leave the negotiations to be replaced by Sinn Féin.
Mr Adams said he protested directly to Mr Ahern and Mr Hain at what he felt was an attempt to exclude Sinn Féin.
"We told the two governments of our concern that they are pandering to the DUP," he said.
"I was also surprised at the naivety involved in all of this . . . you have heard me say before, who is in charge? Is it Bertie Ahern, Tony Blair or Ian Paisley? Today it is Ian Paisley."
Mr Adams said he was shocked that the two governments would expect Sinn Féin "of all people to engage in our own exclusion, when we have argued as a hallmark of this process that inclusivity is required".
A spokesman for Mr Ahern said there was no attempt to exclude. The point was rather to try to devise a mechanism, within the reality of the situation, where the DUP would not deal directly with Sinn Féin and whereby there would be as much engagement as possible between the parties.
The Ulster Unionist Party also said it would not participate in the "pantomime" round-table talks.
Mr Ahern and Mr Hain nonetheless held talks with the parties in trilateral form yesterday, with the exception of the DUP which refused to meet the Minister for Foreign Affairs because, said Dr Paisley, the subject of the talks were purely relevant to Northern Ireland.
"That's I think a source of disappointment because we are at a stage where we need all the parties to engage if we want to get to the end game of the restoration of devolution here in Northern Ireland," Mr Ahern said.
"We need to bring this to finality. As the two governments have said, we believe 2006 is the year to do business and nothing has deviated us from that deadline."
Earlier yesterday, Mr Hain set a deadline of March 8th for the parties to agree amendments to the catch-all Northern Ireland Bill, which deals primarily with creating enabling legislation to devolve responsibility for policing and criminal justice to the assembly, should it be reinstated.
He said the parties should determine whether there were areas of agreement on other issues relating to the running of the Assembly and matters that could be incorporated into the Bill.
