Crisis talks follow N.I. elections
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Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble is under pressure after the vote.
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 The agreement is not dead, because most people in Northern Ireland want it to work. I am not underestimating the difficulties, but I am not unhopeful that we can make progress. 
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-- Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy
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SPECIAL REPORT
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BELFAST, Northern Ireland (CNN) -- Britain's minister for Northern Ireland is holding talks with the province's politicians after hard-liners won the largest number of seats in the country's power-sharing assembly.
The Rev. Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which has pledged to destroy the 1998 Good Friday agreement, emerged as the largest group in the suspended 108-seat assembly.
Sinn Fein, political ally of the Irish Republican Army, beat the moderate Social Democratic and Labor Party (SDLP), to mark a polarization of the political landscape in British-ruled Northern Ireland.
Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary Paul Murphy is holding separate talks on how to restore power sharing with both sides at Hillsborough.
He told the BBC: "The agreement is not dead, because most people in Northern Ireland want it to work. I am not underestimating the difficulties, but I am not unhopeful that we can make progress."
The DUP won 30 seats, while the moderate Ulster Unionist Party, led by David Trimble, had 27 seats. Sinn Fein won 24 seats, while the SDLP had 18. Other parties won nine seats.
Observers say Paisley's refusal to work with Sinn Fein -- now the largest nationalist party -- almost certainly means no return to a power-sharing executive.
One of Trimble's biggest internal critics, Jeffrey Donaldson, who polled strongly in his Lagan Valley constituency, said the rise in support for the DUP indicated strong unionist dissatisfaction with the Good Friday agreement, which set up the assembly and power-sharing executive.
"I think there are serious questions in the unionist population as to the agreement and support for the agreement. Now is the time to examine that," he told the British Press Association.
Adams said the party's gains were an endorsement of its peace-process strategy.
"We asked people to endorse the risks we were taking with the peace process. We stood on our record in the assembly and the executive," he told the association.
Earlier in the day, as the results showed hard-liners making huge gains, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Irish Prime Minister Bertie Ahern met in Cardiff, Wales, to consider the repercussions of the poll returns. The joint statement was released soon after the election results were announced.
In the United States, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the White House was "concerned" about the election results.
"I do believe that after having a taste of peace, that the people of Northern Ireland desperately want peace," she said. "And so I would hope that any leadership would recognize that the Good Friday agreement gives an opportunity for Northern Ireland to continue to develop."
The assembly and power-sharing executive were was suspended in October 2002 after allegations of an IRA spy ring. Attempts by Blair and Ahern to revive power sharing in October this year failed in a dispute over the transparency of IRA arms decommissioning.
Trimble's party then said it did not have sufficient confidence in the decommissioning to work with Sinn Fein.
CNN correspondent Diana Muriel contributed to this report.
