The British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, is due to announce new security measures to suppress paramilitary activity when he makes a two-hour visit to Northern Ireland tomorrow.
The most significant measure is expected to be a move to tighten the law on membership of proscribed organisations and make it easier to secure convictions. The Northern Ireland Office said the so-called `Real IRA' was already in this category.
Speculation about permitting the use of phone-tap evidence in court cases was being played down last night by official sources, although such a move has been under consideration by British government lawyers.
Observers believe the recall of parliament is a strong possibility, despite procedural difficulties, and the date most widely mentioned is September 2nd, which would coincide with the recall of the Dail for a similar purpose.
Mr Blair will fly directly to Belfast from France, where he is on holiday. The Prime Minister is also expected to talk to political leaders, to reassure them on the security situation while stressing the need to maintain political momentum.
"What is important in terms of security is that no terrorist grouping has been isolated politically in the way that this grouping has been isolated in terms of popular will," senior British political sources said.
The Ulster Unionist security spokesman, Mr Ken Maginnis MP, said he would be judging Mr Blair's visit "in the light of his promise to ensure that there is no legislation in the Republic which is not matched by similar legislation here".
He stressed that there must be no "hiccups" when it came to putting laws in place to deal with "this significant rump of militant republicanism". Sinn Fein has been coming under increasing political pressure in the aftermath of the Omagh bomb attack.
Although there is growing concern among unionists that a significant percentage of Provisional IRA prisoners due for release under the Belfast Agreement will defect to the `Real IRA', Sinn Fein sources dismissed this as "utterly untrue".
Meanwhile, members of the `Real IRA' are to hold a secret meeting, possibly before the end of this month, to decide on their future strategy in the wake of the Omagh bombing. Last week the `Real IRA' said it had suspended its campaign of violence pending the outcome of discussions on its future direction.
At the meeting its members are expected to consider two options, according to reliable sources. The first would involve declaring a temporary ceasefire for some months, to allow the group to build its strength. The second would involve an indefinite ceasefire and a decision to pursue an exclusively political road.
Each option is understood to have some support among `Real IRA' members.
In the wake of the INLA's weekend announcement of a ceasefire, Government and Opposition politicians have called on the Continuity IRA, the only republican paramilitary group not to have called a halt to violent activity, to do so.
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, had another telephone conversation with Mr Blair last night. He briefed him on conversations he had in Omagh yesterday with the North's First Minister, Mr David Trimble, and his deputy, Mr Seamus Mallon, and on a meeting with the SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, at the Humbert Summer School in Ballina, Co Mayo, on Friday.
Welcoming the INLA's ceasefire announcement yesterday, Mr Ahern said the Continuity IRA "must now acknowledge that it is insanity to defy the Irish people and must also definitively end their anachronistic campaign.
"The Government are determined to crush violence and ruthlessly to suppress any groups who persist in efforts to perpetrate it," he said. The INLA's statement was "good news at the end of a bleak and tragic week".
He warned that the Omagh bombing might not be the last atrocity, due to the activities of a "small element" who refuse to accept the Belfast Agreement.
"I'd love to say to you that I believe this is the last event, as I would have loved to say it on a number of the last events," Mr Ahern told BBC's Breakfast with Frost programme yesterday. "But I think there is a small element, and they are small, who do not share that feeling."
"They believe that they have some kind of a mandate from some period in history that gives them some right to do this. Of course they have not."
Mr Ahern said he was confident the IRA would signal soon that it was ready to start decommissioning its weapons. "I am confident that we will get to a position fairly soon where we will be able to move on beyond a lot of the rhetoric of the past and the harsh words and where these people will sit down, as per the agreement, and work together, and that we will deal with the decommissioning issue."
He appealed to young people not to become involved in paramilitary organisations. "It only ruins your life. There are people who have served long, long terms of sentences because they have listened to these godfathers."