The Anglican Communion faces the real threat of a split over homosexuality, the Archbishop of Canterbury conceded today.

Dr Rowan Williams said the rift will not be resolved without pain, and without someone admitting that they were wrong.

"We still face the possibility of division, of course we do," Dr Williams said, at a press conference after a crisis meeting of 35 Anglican Primates. "That's not going to go away. Any lasting solution will require people somewhere along the line to say: 'Yes, we were wrong'."

Anglican leaders last night asked the US Episcopal Church and the Anglican Church of Canada to withdraw voluntarily for three years from the main consultative council of the communion, because of the election of a gay bishop in the United States and the blessing of same-sex unions there and in Canada.

Conservatives from the "Global South" churches in Africa and Asia, who believe the Bible preaches that homosexuality is a sin, had wanted the suspension and then expulsion of the US and Canadian Churches if they failed to repent.

But canon lawyers, who have been heavily involved in the Primates' meeting at the Dromantine Roman Catholic retreat centre, advised that there was no legal process by which any of the 38 provinces can be suspended from the 77-million strong Communion. They were instead asked to voluntarily withdraw for at least three years.

Asking the two North American communions to distance themselves for a time is widely seen as the first step towards a permanent split in the 77 million-strong Communion - although other Anglican leaders said it was just an attempt to create a breathing space. Peter Carnley, Archbishop of Perth and Primate of Australia, told a news conference that church leaders had no intention of weakening the communion or of allowing it to become a loose-knit federation.

"That has no interest for the Primates," he said. "We are theologically grounded in the communion of God the Holy Trinity and that's what we want to maintain."

The call for the US and Canadian churches to withdraw was announced in a statement released last night after a week-long meeting in Newry, County Down. The two Churches were told to "consider their place in the Anglican Communion" before the next Lambeth Conference in 2008.

The statement from the Armagh meeting represented a conservative success in forcing the liberals in North America to consider whether their stance over gays is compatible with membership of the Anglican Communion.

The split has been caused by the consecration of the openly gay bishop Gene Robinson to the New Hampshire diocese, and the Episcopal Church's refusal to fall in with the demands of the Windsor Report, which called for statements of regret over gay consecrations and same-sex blessings and a moratorium on similar actions. The Canadian Church is facing similar conditions over its authorisation of same-sex blessings in 2003.

But lines of communications will remain open and both churchs will send representatives to a hearing at the next meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council in Nottingham in June.

The communiqué also commits the Communion to "pastoral support and care of homosexual people" and acknowledges that Canada and the US had not acted outside their constitutions.

Most Reverend Frank Griswold, head of the Episcopal Church in the USA, said that discussions were continuing. "These days have not been easy for any of us and the communique reflects the strong desire to find a way forward as a communion in the midst of deep differences which have been brought into sharp relief around the subject of homosexuality," he said.

"Clearly, all parts of the communique will not please everyone. It is important to keep in mind that it was written with a view to making room for a wide variety of perspectives."

Archbishop Carnley earlier told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that he didn't think schism would occur: "We live in a communion of 38 autonomous churches, all of whom are inter-dependent and work together and we want to continue to do that."

He said the North American Churches operated in a legal and constitutional way "even if the rest of the Anglican communion disagrees with what they did".

The communiqué is expected to precipitate further crises in the liberal churches of the West, including the Church of England. Thousands of lesbian and gay Christians and their supporters are threatening to leave if the US and Canada Churches are sidelined.

It also poses financial problems. The US Church, with more than two million members, is one of the smallest but is also the wealthiest, financing communications systems in many of the provinces that object most to its liberalism. At least one African province has refused to accept any more cash.

Thirty-five of the Anglican Communion's 38 Primates were closeted in guarded quarters at the retreat centre. The bulk of the work towards the end of the meeting was done by Dr Williams, Dr Peter Akinola, the Primate of Nigeria, and Bishop Griswold, in consultation with John Rees, the Church of England canon lawyer. They were said to be exhausted when they emerged with the completed draft, early yesterday evening.

Although the communiqué represents a victory for the conservatives, a senior source said it was not correct to speak in terms of suspension or of measures being taken against the US Church. The correct language, he said, was "withdrawal".

He continued: "The churches of the US and Canada have got to follow their own constitutional processes. The whole thing has to be done properly. They have to go and consider their position. They are the ones who have to tell us what they want."

The two Churches have until the 2008 Lambeth Conference to meet the demands of the Windsor Report, which called on them to regret their actions, impose a moratorium on future similar actions and come up with theological justifications for what they have done.

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