BELFAST (Reuters) - The IRA has warned London and Dublin not to play down a fresh breakdown in efforts to secure a lasting political settlement between Northern Ireland's feuding communities.

The warning came a day after the group withdrew a conditional offer to put its weapons beyond use.

Government officials and police chiefs said they did not believe the withdrawal meant the IRA was preparing to plunge the province back into the violence that plagued it for 30 years. But the IRA said they should take the move seriously.

"The two governments are trying to play down the importance of our statement because they are making a mess of the peace process," the IRA said in a second statement received by several media organisations, including Reuters, late on Thursday.

"Do not underestimate the seriousness of the situation," it added in the two-line statement.

It did not explicitly threaten to end its 1997 ceasefire.

The group's angry words underline the bleak outlook for Anglo-Irish efforts to return the running of Northern Ireland to its divided Protestant and Catholic communities.

"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 reporters in Belfast before the second IRA statement was made.

Dublin and London declined to comment on the latest statement, but said it did not change their positions.

The two governments accuse the IRA, widely blamed for a massive Belfast bank heist, of blocking political progress.

DISARMAMENT DEAL OFF

In December, the IRA, which killed around 1,800 people during a three-decade campaign, offered 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 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 bank robbery in Belfast.

"We do not intend to remain quiescent within this unacceptable and unstable situation," the IRA said in Wednesday's statement. "It has tried our patience to the limit. Consequently ... we are taking all our proposals off the table."

The IRA has indicated its displeasure with events in a similar manner during previous crises in the peace process.

Political analysts were already predicting little movement on reviving the assembly before May's expected London election, which will be fiercely contested in the province. Now many are predicting a longer political freeze.

"The prospect ... is that the stalemate will continue indefinitely," said an editorial in Thursday's Belfast Telegraph.

I'm aiming to pull the good-news trifecta. Just need one more country/group to do something warlike in the next 5 hours.

it's a great time to be alive! especially in the middle east

I hear trying to live through one single day has become quite the sport out there! I hope we can get a league going in this country for that. It'd be exciting to watch on TV.

the newest fox reality tv show: surviving in iraq

I motion we have Paris Hilton be the first contestant.

I motion we have Paris Hilton be the first contestant.

It's been a few years, I suppose both sides are ready to tear each other a new one, eh?

Erm, no. These developments are entirely political. For the IRA to break its ceasefire would be, for want of a better term, political suicide. It isn't going to happen.

Erm, no. These developments are entirely political. For the IRA to break its ceasefire would be, for want of a better term, political suicide. It isn't going to happen.

This would take into account that the IRA now cares more about politics and political standing than their original goals. Honestly I haven't kept up much on the IRA so I don't know which would be more likely at this point in time.

My take on it is that they haven't given up their original goals, but are now pursuing political rather than paramilitary means to achieve the same goal. There has really been no stomach in the republican community for armed struggle for some time now, in particular since the Omagh bombing. The tit for tat over decomissioning will likely continue for months or years, but it certainly doesn't mean that a return to violence is imminent.