There should be demilitarised on all sides and there must be an end to "political and paramilitary policing," Sinn Féin's chief negotiator Martin McGuinness said yesterday.
His remarks came in a section of a speech at the McGill Summer School in Donegal on the role of education in a civilised society.
Mr McGuinness emphasised that politics must work and must be seen to be working.
But he said that task becomes very difficult if the British government unilaterally and arbitrarily suspends the democratic process upon which politics is based.
The Mid Ulster MP said that cancelling elections undermines democracy and politics and damages the peace process which is premised on the possibility of making politics work.
He said: "Perhaps the British government does not fully understand the significance of their actions but they are entirely responsible for the dangerous vacuum which currently exists and which opponents of the peace process on both sides will try to exploit."
Mr McGuinness and Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams both yesterday called for the British government to set a firm date for elections to the Assembly, despite the internal problems affecting the UUP.
Sinn Féin's view is that the peace process had to be seen to be bigger than the future of any one party.
Mr McGuinness urged that the political institutions agreed on Good Friday and endorsed by the people needs to be put back in place urgently.
According to Mr McGuinness Sinn Féin is now engaged in a renewed negotiation with the British and Irish governments in an attempt to achieve this.
"But there can be no renegotiation of the Good Friday agreement.
"The agreement must be implemented in full. We must see an end to political and paramilitary policing. Our society must be demilitarised, on all sides. There must be an end to discrimination, inequality and sectarianism. Human rights must become a reality for all our people.
"The British government has accepted, in the recently published joint declaration, that it has failed to deliver on these obligations so there is a particular onus on that government to do so without further delay," Mr McGuinness said.
Meanwhile, the SDLP's Carmel Hanna has said it was time for people to look beyond what was happening in the Ulster Union-ist Party and make a real effort to move the process forward.
Ms Hanna made it clear that the internal battle inside the UUP should not continue to be viewed as the only show in town.
"As democrats and as pro-agreement leaders we cannot allow the future of the agreement to be in effect devolved to those who are fighting divisively inside the UUP.
"Just as the Good Friday Agreement cannot be fully safeguarded by the 'saving David' tactics of the past, neither can we allow David Trimble to be the shock absorber for challenges to the agreement from within unionism," she said.
