SDLP leader, Mr Mark Durkan, will today urge British Prime Minister Tony Blair to announce Assembly elections in the North despite growing pessimism despite about the deal needed to restore power sharing.
With several key players in the peace process admitting it may not be possible to restore a working Assembly before the new year, Mr Durkan will argue that an announcement of an election date would, nonetheless, create "a new incentive".
"It is time that the people mandated the process in the first place should be allowed the chance to go to the polls," he said.
Mr Durkan yesterday met Sinn Féin president Mr Gerry Adams who also met with Ulster Unionist leader Mr David Trimble.
With republicans facing demands for an IRA declaration of an end to all paramilitary activity, the West Belfast MP cautioned unionists and British and Irish governments that they were "setting the bar too high".
Mr Adams also criticised the Ulster Unionists for their rejection of British and Irish proposals for the peace process, insisting it amounted to the party turning its back on "element after element, after element" of the Belfast Agreement.
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, also gave a more downbeat assessment of the current negotiations, telling the Dáil yesterday that the parties still had no basis for a deal.
An SDLP source said Mr Durkan would also raise the issue of north Belfast teenager Peter McBride whose killers, two Scots Guards, had been readmitted to the British Army after receiving early release.
"We will be making the point that it is ridiculous that someone like Major Charles Ingram should be kicked out of the Army for cheating on a gameshow, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?and on the other hand two soldiers convicted of murder should remain in the Army."
The spokesman said the party would also be urging the Prime Minister to honour commitments made at the Weston Park negotiations that the recommendation of retired Canadian judge Peter Cory on six controversial killings in Northern Ireland would be implemented.
Mr Justice Cory handed in the findings of his investigations into the killings of solicitors Pat Finucane and Rosemary Nelson, Portadown Catholic Robert Hamill and loyalist prisoner Billy Wright to the Government yesterday.
PA