The Taoiseach and the Sinn Féin president will lead senior delegations at an early-morning meeting in Dublin today designed to rescue the deal in the North, against a backdrop of escalating bitterness between them.
The acrimony between Sinn Féin and the Government over the issue of the Jerry McCabe killers grew dramatically yesterday, with the Taoiseach saying Mr Gerry Adams was "wrong" on the matter, while Sinn Féin TD Mr Aengus Ó Snodaigh called Mr Ahern a "liar" in response.
The exchanges came on the eve of this morning's meeting between the Taoiseach, Minister for Foreign Affairs and Minister for Justice and a Sinn Féin delegation led by Mr Adams. Mr Adams will fly later today to London for talks at Downing Street with the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair.
Mr Ahern again insisted yesterday that a deal was close, and he signalled the Government has still not given up hope of a deal before Christmas. "It would be an act of insanity by the whole lot of us" not to reach agreement now, he said.
The Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Dermot Ahern, and the Northern Secretary, Mr Paul Murphy, will host meetings with the North's political parties on Wednesday in Belfast, while the following day the Taoiseach and Mr Blair meet in Brussels on the margins of an EU summit.
The Taoiseach revealed that the IRA's representative had been in contact with Gen John de Chastelain of the decommissioning body over the weekend. "Even since Wednesday, over this weekend, there has been further work and further engagement between the IRA and Gen John de Chastelain and that should be read as a very positive sign," he said.
Nevertheless, there were signs of growing tensions yesterday between the Government and Sinn Féin amid fears that the failure to conclude a deal last week could lead parties to move back from commitments they had been prepared to make.
The Taoiseach yesterday flatly contradicted two of the key points made by Mr Adams during a Late Late Show interview on Friday night: that he had given assurances to Sinn Féin five years ago that the McCabe killers would be released from jail if there was a deal, and that Sinn Féin had effectively signed up to a "no criminality" pledge sought by the two governments.
Mr Ó Snodaigh called the Taoiseach "a liar" for denying he had given Mr Adams an assurance, before the McCabe killers were convicted, that they would be released if there was a comprehensive deal.
Asked if he was calling Mr Ahern a liar, Mr Ó Snodaigh told TV3's programme The Political Party yesterday: " Yes. I am in this case. If he is not willing to say what transpired when negotiations were ongoing over the last number of years, then I am saying he was a liar. This was put to bed between the Government and our negotiators way back There was an understanding between our negotiators and the Taoiseach and all of his negotiators."
The Taoiseach had said earlier this was not true. It was "not correct" for Mr Adams to say, as he has done twice, that around the time of the signing of the Good Friday agreement the government had given Mr Adams the understanding that the McCabe killers would be released.
"The McCabe killers were not even convicted at that stage. Technically they were still innocent people. The court case wasn't for another 10 months", he told RTÉ's This Week programme.
"In fairness to Gerry, he usually has a good memory but on this one he is wrong." A spokeswoman for the Taoiseach later declined to respond to the "liar" remark. Mr Ahern also demanded a clear commitment from the IRA not to engage in future criminality.