The Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble, has again stressed the need for IRA "acts of completion" as a prelude to fresh elections to the Northern Ireland assembly.
Speaking in the House of Commons yesterday, Mr Trimble suggested these should amount to a commitment to complete decommissioning and the "effective disbandment" of the IRA.
Momentum has been growing for an autumn poll since Mr Trimble's surprisingly comfortable defeat of his principal rival, Mr Jeffrey Donaldson, at last Saturday's Ulster Unionist Council meeting.
And the UUP leader is expected to consider the prospects for a November election at a meeting with the Taoiseach soon after Mr Ahern's talks with the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, at Chequers on Saturday.
His intervention during Northern Ireland Questions yesterday was clearly designed to turn the spotlight on the British government's previous insistence that the elections should only be held with a realistic prospect of restoring not just the Stormont assembly but also the power-sharing executive.
Pressed to say that the government still believed there would be "acts of completion" - which Mr Trimble described as a euphemism for complete decommissioning and effective disbandment by the IRA - the Northern Ireland Secretary, Mr Paul Murphy, expressed hope that progress could be made to ensure the early re-establishment of both the assembly and the devolved government.
Earlier Mr Murphy had told the DUP leader, the Rev Ian Paisley, that decommissioning would be a major issue in negotiations over the coming weeks and stressed the potential of the proposed Independent Monitoring Commission to provide reassurance about "the end to paramilitarism.
The Conservative shadow secretary of state, Mr Quentin Davies, told Mr Murphy "the government must stop shilly-shallying about and call the election".
And the deputy DUP leader, Mr Peter Robinson, warned Mr Murphy that the Belfast Agreement could not survive on the strength of nationalist support alone.
"No solution can endure without the support of both sections of the community. Half of the Ulster Unionist Party no longer supports this process and that party as a whole represents less than half the unionist community," Mr Robinson said.
"The present process has failed. It cannot provide a basis for lasting stability in the province. The Secretary of State must allow politicians to get a new mandate so that negotiations can be held to get a deal that both unionists and nationalists can support."
The former SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, warned the DUP and others that if they succeeded in overthrowing the Belfast Agreement they would also be overthrowing the principle of consent, which he suggested meant "if there has to be a future agreement it would be confined to the two [British and Irish] governments."
In a separate reference to the DUP, the SDLP's Mr Séamus Mallon challenged Mr Murphy to confirm that legislation creating the independent monitoring commission would also require all parties assuming ministerial posts at Stormont to attend executive and North-South ministerial meetings.