Sinn Fein has been warned that republicans are running out of time to abandoned criminality and take part in the next stage of the peace process.

Speaking in the Commons on Wednesday, the prime minister said that all sides should now end terrorism and "ordinary criminality".

His comments follow a major row over the IRA's alleged involvement in a £26 million bank robbery in Belfast.

That claim has led unionists to urge the government to press ahead with the restoration of devolution without Sinn Fein's participation.

And Tony Blair's message to Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness was blunt.

"The challenge is for those who have been engaged in this type of activity to realise that we cannot wait forever while they make up their minds," he said.

The fallout from the row has threatened to undermine the government too, however.

Former first minister David Trimble told the prime minister that, because he had failed to develop a coherent response to the raid, "you are in danger of giving the impression that after a little while you will welcome back through your door the biggest bank robber in British history".

"Do you realise the damage that will do to yourself and your party?" the Ulster Unionist Party leader asked Blair.

Blair said he still wanted to move forward with all parties, but said "fundamental" change was required from those with terrorist links.

"I still want to find, if I can, a way forward that includes everybody but it has to be said that we cannot have a situation any longer where there are political parties associated to paramilitary groups - where they are committing either what we might call terrorist offences or ordinary criminality," he told MPs.

"There simply can be no place for that. Unless or until it is absolutely clear that things have changed, fundamentally, then it's difficult to see the way forward on that inclusive basis."

The Commons exchanges came a day after the IRA officially denied any involvement in the robbery.

But Ulster secretary Paul Murphy said he felt "deep regret that progress towards re-establishment of devolved government has been put in jeopardy" by the IRA.

Speaking during Northern Ireland questions, he said that it was not possible to "forecast when it will be possible to re-establish an inclusive power-sharing executive".

Shadow Northern Ireland secretary David Lidington said ministers should now "make it very clear that the government is not going to allow the IRA to treat guns, private armies and criminal empires as some kind of bargaining chip to be traded for political concessions or for meetings at Number 10".