Northern Secretary Peter Hain has said he will not recall the Northern Assembly to see it "shipwrecked" a short time later.
Speaking alongside Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern after multi-party talks at Hills-borough, he said a deadline was approaching for the parties to find an accommodation leading to devolution.
The ministers had talks with all the Assembly parties, including the DUP, Ulster Unionists, Sinn Féin and the SDLP, in separate meetings yesterday to push for progress leading to the restoration of Stormont.
A letter signed by both ministers was given to all the delegations stating that a clear sense of direction should be agreed by April so both governments could take "the necessary steps".
The governments made clear the onus lay with the parties and that their role was to facilitate and encourage progress.
To that end the joint letter proposed "an intensive programme of discussions from now until April with our next meeting on February 20th, and dates diaried thereafter".
Rejecting calls from Sinn Féin and the SDLP for the Assembly to be reconvened, Mr Hain said: "I'm not going to convene the Assembly only to have it shipwrecked immediately afterwards. There is no point in doing that. But at the same time the clock is ticking. We can't keep off reconvening the Assembly forever. It's costing millions of pounds to stay idle. People won't stand for that."
Both ministers said that the answer to the stalemate which has gripped politics since the suspension of the Belfast Agreement in 2002, lay in the hands of the local parties.
Neither Mr Hain nor Mr Ahern wished to impose "artificial" deadlines. But both insisted there was a timetable working backwards from scheduled elections to the Assembly in May 2007.
Mr Ahern insisted twice that whatever the politicians agreed had to fit into the "template of the Good Friday agreement".
Mr Hain indicated that legislation would be tabled at West- minster which would enable the devolution of policing and justice powers to any restored Executive.
However, enabling legislation could also be put before the House of Commons to enable aspects of the so-called "Comprehensive Agreement" to be enacted. This was negotiated by the governments, the DUP and Sinn Féin in December 2004 and was designed to facilitate the restoration of Stormont.
However, the agreement fell over the issue of the transparency of any IRA decommissioning.
That agreement was still on the table, Mr Ahern said.
Despite the current difficulties, Mr Hain said he was confident the necessary progress would be made to facilitate the restoration of power sharing.
The main principles of the Belfast Agreement remained in place, including power sharing and North-South co-operation, Mr Hain confirmed.
"Now the detail - we have always committed to reviewing the detail in the light of experience," he said.
"That is what we propose doing in the discussions starting next week. All the parties have agreed to that."