THE Tanaiste and the Northern Secretary, Sir Patrick Mayhew, will launch the round of "intensive" consultations beginning at Stormont at 11 a.m. on Monday.
Officials are devising the timetable for these talks between governments and parties on elections and on the content of the all party negotiations on June 10th.
Meanwhile, the Tanaiste has moved to assure Sinn Fein and the IRA that the decommissioning problem will not have to be resolved in isolation from other questions in the all party talks.
While all parties would have to address the International Body's proposals on decommissioning, it would be unrealistic to expect that any one issue, or complex of issues, in the negotiations will be fully settled and resolved on its own and in advance of the others".
Mr Spring, who was addressing the Seanad, on the results of Wednesday's Anglo Irish summit, said the requirement that decommissioning be addressed at the start of the negotiations "does not mean and cannot be interpreted as meaning that serious negotiation on all other issues must wait until the decommissioning issue is definitively settled".
As the Mitchell report recognised, there would be a "dynamic interplay" between progress on arms and on political questions. The need to tackle decommissioning must not be allowed to impede negotiations on the three strands of relationships.
He also replied to the query by the Fianna Fail leader, Mr Bertie Ahern, as to why in paragraph 9 of the communique, "the Taoiseach alone was described as insisting that an elective process be situated within a three stranded negotiating structure".
It had been already stated in paragraph 6, said Mr Spring, that both governments were committed to addressing all relevant issues "in an interlocking three stranded process".