from CNN

"Sinn Fein accused Britain of defaulting on the Good Friday pact by suspending the Belfast government, and Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams on Tuesday blamed Mandelson for rejecting the IRA's latest offers.

"It was a bad meeting, quite frankly," Adams said "And this Sinn Fein leadership has now no further room to move. We have seen the failure of politics."

But the province's major Catholic party, the Social Democratic and Labor Party, condemned the IRA decision. Seamus Mallon, the SDLP's deputy leader and senior Catholic in the suspended Cabinet, said the IRA and Sinn Fein seemed bent on treating disarmament as "a bargaining chip" rather than an obligation.

"We must now clearly establish if in effect the IRA are going to be part of the new future," Mallon said. "Or are they going to believe that they can thwart the wishes of the Irish government, the British government, the people of the island of Ireland, and indeed world opinion?" "

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