The Taoiseach said yesterday that elections in Northern Ireland on their own would not lead to progress in the Northern peace process, reports Conor O'Clery in Albany.
There were three conditions necessary for progress in Northern Ireland, Mr Ahern said: elections within three weeks, an end to all paramilitary activity and an acceptance of the institutions, especially by the unionists.
Mr Ahern was speaking to reporters after a meeting with the Democratic senator for New York, Ms Hillary Rodham Clinton, who had invited him to the New York state capital.
Mr Ahern and Ms Clinton discussed Northern Ireland and expanding business and educational links between Ireland and upstate New York.
"There were supposed to be elections in the springtime but the British government decided not to have those. I disagreed," Mr Ahern said.
"Over the next three weeks or so we have to get a commitment that there will be elections before Christmas, a commitment that paramilitary activity will end and that it will end for good, and we have to get a commitment that if institutions are set up again that they will be genuinely worked by all sides, particularly the unionists.
"If we get clarity on those issues - that paramilitary activity is over and that we can get stability in the institutions - I believe we can make progress," Mr Ahern said.
Elections alone would only give a "democratic mandate in a very bad situation", he stated.
"That is not what I have been working for, and that is not what Senator Clinton has been working for over the years."
Agreement must be reached over the next three weeks, the Taoiseach said, because it would require six weeks to hold elections and any later would bring the poll too close to the Christmas holidays.
Mr Ahern met the British Prime Minister 10 days ago and there has been some speculation about agreement gradually emerging among the parties in Northern Ireland on the way ahead.
The meeting with Ms Clinton took place at the College of St Rose, where the Taoiseach received the Oldcastle Award on Irish American Affairs.