Matthew Tempest and agencies
Thursday February 3, 2005
Sinn Féin today shifted the blame back to the British and Irish governments for last night's IRA withdrawal of an arms decommissioning offer, saying the entire peace process was now in "deep crisis".
Speaking the morning after the IRA formally withdrew its offer of allowing full inspections of arms dumps, chief negotiator Martin McGuinness said Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern had been too quick to buy into the "opinion" of one police officer over December's £26m bank raid, blamed on the republican terrorists by Northern Ireland chief constable Hugh Orde.
Although Downing Street has kept its nerve in the face of the IRA move, calling it "not unexpected", it comes just six days after Mr Blair met both Gerry Adams and Mr McGuinness for face-to-face talks at Chequers.
But as the war of words escalated this morning, Mr McGuinness told the BBC: ""The real difficulty here is that the two governments have opted for confrontation.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Northern_Ireland/Story/0,2763,1404955,00.html