Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair are fully engaged in the efforts to end the political impasse, according to their spokesmen. Progress is being made "on all fronts", but the official line is that some hard talking still has to be done. The picture remains blurred, however, on where we are on policing.
The British government in principle has said it will move on the watchtowers in south Armagh, but there's a quid pro quo involved. The IRA, it seems, will start talking to Gen John de Chastelain again but, as regards when and how it will put its arms beyond use, that still remains rather hazy.
Yet the general informed view is that all it needs is a pretty sharp change in the political climate and the fog will lift. Wednesday night's meeting between Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair was about returning to the Hillsborough deal of May last year, but this time, as a number of participants have said, with "everything nailed down".
The problem of the May agreement was that Sinn Fein, the UUP and the SDLP believed they had categorical, but apparently separate and conflicting, assurances from the British government on what it fully entailed.
This time the parties agree there is little space for creative ambiguity, although in terms of arms, some of that commodity will be required. Anti-agreement unionist Peter Weir said yesterday that republicans were hoping to pocket concessions on demilitarisation and policing in return for "vague and token gestures" on weapons.
Mr Trimble said he didn't care how decommissioning happened as long as it happened. Ulster Unionists, in their Yes wing, are focusing on the words in the Decommissioning Act to make weapons "permanently unusable and permanently unavailable". Sinn Fein and the SDLP say there is still distance between them and the British government on policing. Nobody has yet blinked on this issue.
We are at the serious brinkmanship stage of these negotiations which by its nature involves a danger of plummeting if the players teeter too long at the edge. "Don't push us, let this take its own pace," was the advice from the talks gurus this week. But in the absence of substantive progress, it's difficult to see how these talks can go much beyond next week.
Next weekend David Trimble faces meetings of his party officers and executive. If politics is as ill-defined then as it is now, the First Minister is likely to face calls for him to start ratcheting up the sanctions against Sinn Fein. It's a given that Gerry Adams and his colleagues do not respond to unionist diktats.
It's unwise to be in any way presumptuous about republicans. A Sunday Times report last weekend suggesting that a deal was in the offing appears to have angered the republican hierarchy, who complained about dangerous spinning.
A good barometer of storm conditions ahead is when parties start engaging in the blame game. That hasn't happened yet.
The Taoiseach believes a deal is within everyone's grasp. The word among talks insiders is that there is more detailed work to be done but that "it is still doable". Mr Ahern and Mr Blair are available to come back to Hillsborough at short notice. There is tentative mention of Wednesday or Thursday, but also warnings it could ominously drift into the following week.
Despite all the uncertainty, the main motivation for pro-agreement politicians is their knowledge that if they can't resolve their remaining differences they might as well hang out the white flag to the advancing anti-agreement forces.