Senator George Mitchell met the Northern Ireland Secretary, Mr Peter Mandelson, in London last night to brief him on two days of talks which appear to have significantly improved the atmospherics between Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionists.
And the Mitchell review of the Belfast Agreement was set to resume in London on Monday as politicians on all sides anticipated the endgame in the search for a resolution of the decommissioning/devolution impasse. Usually reliable political and official sources indicated their belief that the make-or-break decisions for the agreement could be taken at the end of the planned week-long negotiation.
Upon arriving at Lancaster House yesterday Mr Gerry Adams, the Sinn Fein president, and Mr David Trimble, the Ulster Unionist leader, agreed that the central issue blocking the formation of the power-sharing executive had still to be resolved.
But following Wednesday's session exclusively involving the Ulster Unionists and Sinn Fein, a number of talks participants suggested that at least the beginning of a serious engagement was finally under way.
Mr Adams said: "There were very lengthy discussions (on Wednesday) and I think the atmosphere, and indeed the engagement, was better than previously."
Irish Government officials, and delegations from the SDLP, the Alliance Party, the PUP, UDP and Women's Coalition joined yesterday's session of the review, which saw a series of bilateral meetings and at least one plenary session involving all the participants.
But it is acknowledged that Mr Trimble and Mr Adams, and their respective parties, hold the key during what looks certain to be another marathon negotiation, which one player predicted would again go to the fifty ninth minute of the eleventh hour.
Senator Mitchell has neither publicly nor privately defined when he will call the midnight hour. But with the fundamental choices facing both parties clearly defined, few of the participants believed decision day could be delayed much beyond next week.
One Ulster Unionist said he believed the endgame was now being reached. Some unionist strategists believe the process has turned a significant corner in that, as one put it, "Sinn Fein now knows we will not shift any further" - this a reference to the party's declared "no guns, no government" position.
However any tendency to optimism was checked by evident scepticism in some Irish circles as to whether Sinn Fein would be prepared to offer the sort of explicit commitments to decommissioning demanded by Mr Trimble on behalf of the whole republican movement - and to delivery of it by May 2000.
It is understood Mr Trimble will brief members of his Assembly Party about the week's events at Stormont later today. But the Rev Ian Paisley yesterday gave a reminder of the dangers Mr Trimble now runs, demanding: "If the Ulster Unionist Party policy is `no guns, no government' why the need for such secret negotiations?
"The people of Ulster should brace themselves for further breathtaking concessions from David Trimble, whose track record is failure after failure to secure the Union," the DUP leader said.
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, were due to meet late last night in the southern Finnish town of Tampere for talks to review the peace process, Patrick Smyth reports.
The meeting, which did not get underway until after 11 p.m. was delayed by Mr Blair's late arrival from London.
A spokesman said that they had wished Senator George Mitchell the best for his London talks and refused to comment further on the discussions. Both leaders are there for the EU summit on justice and home affairs which starts today.