The Sinn Féin and SDLP leaders both pressed the Government yesterday to ensure police reform and equality and human rights measures were implemented in the North despite the DUP's gains in last week's election.
Meanwhile, the US special envoy, Mr Richard Haass, said yesterday that while the core principles of the Belfast Agreement should remain intact, "we ought to welcome ideas from the parties for changes and reforms". He said that at a meeting with DUP representatives earlier yesterday, he got the impression that they were "sensitive to the reality that while the details of the Good Friday agreement are changeable, the fundamentals are not".
Mr Gerry Adams and Mr Mark Durkan led party delegations to separate meetings in Government Buildings yesterday afternoon with the Taoiseach and the Minister for Foreign Affairs. Mr Haass met the Taoiseach yesterday evening.
Mr Adams told reporters afterwards that by virtue of its mandate, the DUP had a veto on the re-establishment of the North's political institutions, but not on political progress. "The DUP have a mandate, a minority one. We suffered from majority rule in the past," he said, and so he was not belittling its mandate.
"But the DUP have to know that they cannot prevent these changes. They are very modest rights and entitlements and the governments must press ahead."
Mr Durkan, who led a party delegation at a meeting with Mr Ahern at Government Buildings, told reporters he had urged the Taoiseach "to ensure the agreement is not put into abeyance and the Joint Declaration is not put on hold". He agreed there was a danger of the North entering a prolonged period of political stalemate and direct rule.
He urged the two governments "not to repeat the mistake" they made in recent months of confining the political process to negotiations between the two parties seen as most obstructive to progress. Before the election this was Sinn Féin and the UUP, now it was Sinn Féin and the DUP, he said.
He also played down speculation that the SDLP could be considering merging with a party in the Republic, most likely Fianna Fáil, to match Sinn Féin as an all-Ireland party. He disagreed with "this idea that you respond to election results with a quick fix". He said he had discussed long-term political realignment in the past with the Taoiseach and other party leaders in the Republic. But any such change had to happen on an organic, evolutionary basis.
Mr Haass told reporters that he got the sense that "the DUP individuals I met, including Peter Robinson, understood the election gave them an opportunity. Historically the DUP has been interested in its part in government.
"The DUP, like everyone else, understand there are inevitably certain constraints inherent" in the forthcoming review of the operation of the Belfast Agreement. He said he was "comfortable with the idea of limited change". Just as in relation to the US Constitution which was amended from time to time, "amendments are potentially welcome to take into account new and different circumstances but changes need to be consistent with the fundamental process and must receive broad support." He said he was open to the idea of revisiting the current system whereby Assembly members must designate themselves as nationalist, unionist or neither.
Meanwhile, Mr Adams also pressed the Taoiseach and the Minister for Foreign Affairs to secure the early publication of the reports by Canadian Judge Peter Cory into alleged collusion in killings North and South.