An angry statement from the IRA underlined the bleak outlook for Anglo-Irish efforts to return the running of Northern Ireland to its divided Protestant and Catholic communities. It did not explicitly threaten to end its 1997 cease-fire.
"We know they have the capability, we know they have the capacity, (but) we do not think they intend to return to what they would call the war," Chief Constable Hugh Orde told reporterrs in Belfast.
The statement, signed with the IRA's traditional pseudonym "P O'Neill", came as British and Irish leaders accused the guerrilla group of blocking political progress after it was widely blame for a massive Belfast bank heist.
"This is the IRA taking its ball home (sulking) because it has been accused of a bank robbery," said Eamon Phoenix, politics lecturer at Stranmillis College, Belfast.
The IRA, which killed around 1,800 people during a three-decade campaign against British rule, had offered in December to disarm as part of a wider deal to revive a provincial parliament in which Protestant and Catholic parties shared power.
That assembly, set up as part of the 1998 Good Friday peace agreement, which largely ended the violence, collapsed more than two years ago amid recriminations over alleged IRA activity.
Negotiations to revive it failed because Protestant unionists, so called because they back the union with Britain, said IRA disarmament must be accompanied by photographic proof - a demand rejected by the IRA as an unacceptable humiliation.
Hopes of completing the deal have since been dashed by police allegations - supported by London and Dublin but denied by the IRA - that the republican group carried out December's 26.5 million pound ($50 million) bank robbery in Belfast.
DISARMAMENT DEAL OFF:
"We do not intend to remain quiescent within this unacceptable and unstable situation," said the IRA statement. "It has tried our patience to the limit. Consequently ... we are taking all our proposals off the table."
The IRA - which draws its support from Northern Ireland's Catholic minority - has indicated its displeasure with events in a similar manner during previous crises in the peace process.
"I don't read the IRA statement in a negative fashion, quite frankly," Irish Taoiseach (prime minister) Bertie Ahern said.
Political analysts were already predicting little movement on reviving the assembly before May's expected British election, which will be rancorously contested in the province. Now many are predicting a longer political freeze.