The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, are expected to meet Northern Ireland party leaders at Downing Street next Thursday, in a final bid to advance the peace process ahead of the European elections and the advent of the marching season.
Mr Blair is due to hold talks at Number 10 later today with leaders of a number of the smaller parties, including the Alliance Party, the PUP, the UDP and the Women's Coalition. However, reliable sources last night indicated that there was no new strategy on the table - beyond an apparent shared hope that the commitment of the parties to continuing dialogue would avert the need to "park" the process formally until after the summer.
Senior Ulster Unionist sources last night told The Irish Times that the latest proposal circulated by the SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, would not of itself resolve the impasse over decommissioning.
In the House of Commons yesterday, Dr Mo Mowlam, the Northern Ireland Secretary, rejected Tory demands that she should proceed with the creation of the executive without Sinn Fein. "If I do what you're asking me to do I will lose the one bit of leverage that I have which is to implement the Good Friday Agreement in full and what I would succeed in doing is destroying the Good Friday Agreement. I have no intention of doing that," she told Mr Andrew Mackay.
At the same time Dr Mowlam rejected a suggestion by Mr Seamus Mallon, the Deputy First Minister, that the two governments should stop "playing nanny" to the parties holding up the agreement and "clearly define the compromises which have got to be made, clearly define the process through which the International Body on Decommissioning can process and advance decommissioning and clearly define a date on which the executive committee and the institutions will come into being without being vetoed by any political party."
Dr Mowlam told Mr Mallon she shared his frustrations, "but he knows as well as I do that unless we get all parties acting collectively to find an accommodation and a way forward it won't work." Dr Mowlam gave Mr David Trimble an undertaking that the British government would consult the parties about its expected proposals for the normalisation of security arrangements in the North. Mr Trimble urged the government that any published strategy would "eschew gimmicks and make sure that the safety of society is the overriding consideration".
Dr Mowlam assured Mr Trimble that the safety of the people of Northern Ireland was "paramount in our minds . . . It's the job of any government and it will remain a strong priority and central to anything that this government does."
Several MPs on both sides welcomed the results of The Irish Times /RTE poll showing that 73 per cent of people in the North now supported the Belfast Agreement. Dr Mowlam said the poll represented a "phenomenal" understanding that the only way forward was to compromise.