Sinn Fein has staged a picket outside the headquarters of the Ulster Unionist Party in protest at plans to suspend the Northern Ireland Assembly.

A bill which will suspend the eight-week-old Assembly was published on Friday morning.

It was the beginning of a process which could mean the return of direct rule, unless there is some movement on IRA decommissioning towards the end of next week.

Mr Mandelson told the House of Commons on Thursday night there had been no decommissioning of arms by any major paramilitary group and added that was a betrayal.

He said: "If this continues, it is totally unacceptable, notably in the case of the IRA."

Sinn Fein said Friday's protest was calling for an end to what they see as the unionist "veto" and for the British Prime Minister Tony Blair not to bow to unionist pressure to suspend the assembly.

Mitchell McLaughlin said the action proposed by Peter Mandelson would "negate the Good Friday Agreement".

But Democratic Unionist Party leader Ian Paisley has accused the government of "stalling".

Meanwhile, former US senator George Mitchell, who chaired a 10-week review of progress in the Good Friday Agreement last year, has ruled out returning to Northern Ireland. He told an American magazine that his role here is complete.

Appeal for disarmament

President of the Methodist Church in Ireland, Reverend Doctor Kenneth Wilson, appealed for a significant and verifiable gesture by all the paramilitary organisations.

He said nothing would give more confidence to the new institutions but rejected any suggestion that decommissioning would be viewed as an IRA surrender.

He said: "I would be extremely uneasy, in fact quite angry, if I thought this on the unionist side was a pretence. I think we've gone beyond that, there's a genuine desire to share government with nationalists."

On Thursday night in the Commons, First Minister and leader of the Ulster Unionist Party David Trimble said progress on decommissioning had been "minuscule" and said he was deeply disappointed.

Mr Trimble said he was "astonished" that so little had happened, accusing the paramilitaries of a "contemptuous response".

Tory Northern Ireland spokesman Andrew Mackay said it was "a very sad day" for Northern Ireland's people who "have been badly let down" by paramilitaries on both sides.

Mr Mackay pledged Tory help in passing the legislation needed as quickly as possible and called on Mr Mandelson to publish the de Chastelain report.

However, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said the secretary of state's speech was a slap in the face to the Sinn Fein leadership who were trying to save the institutions.

"If he suspends the institutions he will be in breach of the Good Friday Agreement. "

Sinn Fein's Gerry Kelly said suspension was "absolutely the wrong way to deal with, first of all the institutions working and moving forward and for politics working and, secondly out of that to deal with the decommissioning issue".

But Deputy First Minister Seamus Mallon appealed to the Secretary of State not to suspend the executive yet.

The announcement to MPs by the Northern Ireland Secretary followed the deadlock between Ulster Unionists and Sinn Fein following the IRA's failure to decommission weapons.