Behind-the-scenes moves to create a pan-unionist front have stalled in the aftermath of last week's apparently successful meeting between the Taoiseach and Mr David Trimble, The Irish Times has learned.
Organisers of a high-level "Friends of the Union" conference, to be held in England this weekend, had hoped to bring the three main unionist parties together on an agreed bottom-line approach to the Stormont talks process and any referendum in Northern Ireland resulting from it.
However, sources last night indicated that the Ulster Unionist Party leader's cautious belief that he might be able to do business with Mr Ahern had, at least temporarily, dashed hopes of bringing unionism's factions together.
Three senior unionists - Mr Trimble, the Democratic Unionist Party's deputy leader, Mr Peter Robinson, and the UK Unionist Party leader, Mr Robert McCartney - are all due to address the private weekend conference, to be held at Hatfield House, family seat of Lord Cranborne, the Conservative leader in the House of Lords.
During a fringe meeting at the Conservative party conference last month Lord Cranborne urged Mr Trimble and the other unionist parties - whether or not they were participating in the talks process - to agree a bottom line over proposals which would eventually be put to the people in a referendum.
The conference organisers had apparently been hoping to effect a pact in which the UUP, DUP and UKUP would agree to respect each other's position on the Stormont talks.
On the assumption that their differences were largely tactical, and that there would be no agreed outcome to the talks, the three parties were being urged to enter private discussions during the Christmas period to prepare their fall-back position should the British government then proceed to impose a solution through a referendum appeal over the heads of the parties.
One of the leading advocates of this approach, who did not wish to be named, said he believed it would bolster Mr Trimble's position by reassuring UUP sceptics that there was "an embryonic contingency plan" in place should the talks fail and the unionists find themselves on a collision course with the British government.
But he accepted "it isn't now going to happen" - at least until the outcome of the UUP/Dublin dialogue becomes clear. Confirming the widespread impression that last week's meeting between Mr Ahern and Mr Trimble had paved the way for an "engagement" on the substantive issues central to a political solution on the North, he added: "David Trimble obviously wants to be seen to negotiate wholeheartedly in the talks, so it's difficult for him to go strongly on the negative."
The conference organisers are likely, as a result, to try to blur the lines of unionist difference; play down expectations for a conference which was being billed just last weekend as "the most important for the unionist family since the foundation of Northern Ireland"; and focus instead on an agreement to found a new proUnion "think-tank".
Paisley tells Blair meeting with Adams totally unacceptable; Ulster Unionists and SDLP in talks on North-South arrangements; pages 8 and 9.