Sinn Fein chairman Mitchell McLaughlin has accused unionists of constantly attempting to renegotiate the Good Friday Agreement.

He was speaking after a meeting of the party's policy directing executive, the Ard Comharile, in Dublin in the Irish Republic on Saturday, after Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble issued a warning over arms.

Mr Trimble said that direct rule could return to the province by the end of the month, if the IRA have not begun to hand over their illegal weapons.

But Mr McLauglin said: "We are calling on both governments to make it very clear, and to do so very authoritively, that there will be no re-negotiation of the Good Friday Agreement.

"David Trimble and his party should disabuse themselves of that possibility."

Canadian General John de Chastelain, who heads the independent decommissioning body, is due to give a crucial assessment on illegal arms before the end of January.

The issue of decommissioning is the final piece of the jigsaw of institutions to be set up under the terms of the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

The Ulster Unionist ruling council endorsed a peace deal last November which allowed devolution to take place before the handover of terrorist weapons.

It is meeting again next month to review its decision to go into government with Sinn Fein.

Threatened to resign

Mr Trimble, the party's leader, has threatened to resign and collapse the institutions if the IRA have not started to decommission by the end of the month.

But Mr McLaughlin claimed that Mr Trimble had "got himself on to a hook and created a crisis for us all" by letting his party nominate the date for movement on arms a meeting of the unionist council last year.

Mr McLaughlin added: "It will also remind all of us that these processes require time and if people are expecting answers by 12 February , then I just wonder where that date came out of, and why it should be seen as a make-or-break date.

"The unionists should be asked why they put themselves in these difficult "I do not think that was in any way part of the Good Friday agreement."

On Friday Mr McLaughlin criticised a comment made by Conservative Northern Ireland spokesman Andrew Mackay that the executive should be collapsed if there is no IRA decommissioning.