The British Government is understood to be considering the return of independent monitors to scrutinise paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland.
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Both parties had hoped Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers would outline definitive steps to crack down on remaining terror structures in a statement to the House of Commons.
The DUP’s leader, Peter Robinson, stood down as First Minister last week over the suggestion by police that the IRA was involved in Mr McGuigan’s murder.
The DUP mass resignation threat and subsequent walkout was prompted by the three arrests, amid claims the investigation into the shooting of former IRA man Kevin McGuigan had reached into the senior levels of Sinn Fein.
DUP ministers resigned last week from Stormont in a row over a murder which police think is linked to members of the IRA – a paramilitary organisation that’s supposed to have disbanded.
Sinn Féin insists that the IRA has gone away and has accused the two unionist parties of contriving a crisis for electoral gain.
Speaking at a news conference on Monday, Mr Robinson said: “The Secretary of State knows what we are looking for, the Prime Minister knows what we are looking for and we’ll listen intently tomorrow to see if it meets the criteria the party has set down”.
“We made clear the circumstances under which we will engage in a fresh talks process”, he said.
Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) leader Mike Nesbitt said: “What we are delivering is broken and it needs to be fixed”.
Sinn Fein maintains that the IRA, which underwent a highly publicised decommissioning of its weapons as part of the GFA peace process, has ceased to exist.
The DUP move to nearly entirely withdraw from the executive will not bring about an immediate collapse of the northern institutions, IRN said. “We await her response”.
However, Sinn Fein’s Martin McGuinness has warned there could be no preconditions.
“I want to see, and am working for, talks to take place with a view to a successful outcome but if talks are not going to take place, or if talks do take place and there is no successful outcome, then in my view the next logical step is an election”.
SDLP MLA Claire Hanna said republicans contradicting the PSNI assessment of the McGuigan murder had “given unionist parties an excuse to put these institutions at risk”.
“We are approaching these talks to achieve a resolution and that should be the goal of all political parties”, he said on Tuesday. Police were initially not treating it as a hate crime, but Bronwyn McGahan, a Sinn Fein assembly member, said she believe it was “sectarian in nature”.
Ms Villiers plans to resume her discussions with the five main Stormont parties on Wednesday. But it remains the region most dependent on government spending in the United Kingdom and politicians have said severe cuts could destabilise the province.
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The three republicans were later released unconditionally.
