The UUP leader, Mr David Trimble, and the Sinn Féin leader, Mr Gerry Adams, will join the Taoiseach and the British Prime Minister in London today in an attempt to achieve a political breakthrough on the North.
It emerged last night that Mr Adams and Mr Trimble, along with their teams of senior negotiators, were invited to join the summit following some "encouraging signals" and the possibility of a "shared understanding" . Mr Ahern and Mr Blair decided that the negotiators should join them at their Downing Street meeting after an intense day of negotiations yesterday between Sinn Féin and the UUP.
Today's London meeting was originally scheduled to take place only in the morning, but it is now likely to proceed into the afternoon and possibly later as Mr Ahern and Mr Blair, along with Mr Adams and Mr Trimble, strive to reach an agreement that republicans and pro-Belfast Agreement unionists can reasonably comfortably endorse.
It was agreed last night that the British government should fly the negotiators to London, The Irish Times learned. It is expected that Mr Ahern and Mr Blair will meet privately first and later they will engage with Mr Adams and Mr Trimble in an effort to find agreement which would result in November elections leading to a workable Executive and Assembly.
Mr Adams and Mr Trimble met in Belfast yesterday morning. After a break they met for a long period in the afternoon and the evening. They also held "useful" talks on Saturday.
"Based on those meetings, the situation looks slightly more encouraging," said one well-placed source.
Hitherto the talks were stalled over difficulties persuading the IRA to sign up to paragraph 13 of the Hillsborough joint declaration which requires the IRA and other paramilitaries to end all activity including targeting, procuring weapons, intelligence gathering, "punishment" attacks and exiling.
Mr Adams, in an apparent reference to this requirement, previously warned about the "bar being set too high" for republicans, while the British and Irish governments and Ulster Unionists equally insisted that without "acts of completion", Assembly elections could not lead to a functioning Executive. It would be elections to a "mess", Mr Ahern said last week.
Much of the focus of the heavy negotiations over the weekend was on persuading the IRA to provide its own form of words which would persuade pro-agreement unionists in particular that it would wind down and cease paramilitary activity. In return, commitments were required from the UUP that it would fully work the Executive, Assembly and other institutions of the agreement.
"There are encouraging signals that David Trimble and Gerry Adams have reached some common understanding on the main issues," a talks insider said last night. He was anxious to stress that this did not guarantee a breakthrough in the coming days but nonetheless he said yesterday's Adams-Trimble talks "went slightly better than expected".
November 13th remains the preferred date for Assembly elections. Based on today's negotiations Mr Ahern and Mr Blair will assess whether elections can be formally called this week for mid-November, although if the Taoiseach and Prime Minister feel there is real merit in further negotiations, the elections could be put back by up to three weeks."It's still a case of when autumn elections will be called, not whether," said a British source.