Irish and British officials will work over the weekend on arrangements for multi-party talks on the peace process, the Minister for Foreign Affairs said yesterday.
Mr Cowen was in Belfast where he completed a round of bilateral meetings with the political parties. It is envisaged that talks will begin in two or three weeks.
The Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, which last met in 1996, is also to be recalled, under the chairmanship of Sen Maurice Hayes, before the end of the month.
Mr Cowen pledged to look at what he called outstanding issues, adding: "I think there is a lot of interaction which has to take place between the parties themselves. Both governments will facilitate talks which will involve round-table talks as well. There are issues out there - full implementation of the agreement has to be agreed upon by all the parties, and there is still a lot of work to be done on that."
President Bush's special envoy, Mr Richard Haass, will return to Ireland by the end of the month and is planning further talks with the parties and the governments.
Yesterday he called for open minds on the question of formats for talks, insisting he was "a great believer that you only move to multi-party settings after you've got a pretty good sense of what they would accomplish".
He denied that the US administration was opposed to suspension of the Stormont institutions, and claimed he was open-minded about best use of American influence in the weeks ahead.
"The Good Friday agreement is the basis of what goes on," he said, adding that those set on large-scale revision of the agreement were deluding themselves.
"The way ahead is not through changing the Good Friday agreement, but rather it's towards making it work and towards doing steps that create a context in which people have a sense of confidence about the political process."
He endorsed comments by the British Prime Minister in yesterday's Irish Times about the need for an end to paramilitary activity.
"The era of paramilitary activity needs to come to an end. There simply is no place for paramilitary behaviour in a modern democratic society," Mr Haass said.
Sinn Féin's chief negotiator, Mr Martin McGuinness, called on the British government to "face up to its responsibilities".
Speaking after his meeting with Mr Cowen, Mr McGuinness added that his party would be "very positively and constructively" engaged in the political process if there was a genuine attempt to implement outstanding elements of the agreement, "and there is a plan of action to do that".
Mr David Ervine, the Progressive Unionist Party leader, said: "The important thing is - how do we get accountable government here? And how do we get an absence of violence? Those were the issues we focused on."
He added his constituency would feel more at ease given assurances that there was no joint-authority plan to fill the gap left by suspension.