One of the US administration's key advisers was heavily involved in new attempts in London tonight to end the decommissioning and policing deadlock threatening the future of the Northern Ireland peace process.
With US President Bill Clinton due to hand over power to George W Bush on Saturday, Mr Jim Steinberg, once a senior White House official, met Irish and British officials to try to agree a formula to save the process being plunged into deep crisis.
As British army explosives experts moved to defuse one of the largest assembled bombs discovered since the signing of the Belfast Agreement, Dublin, Belfast and London confirmed a quickening of the pace to try and negotiate a settlement.
A deal is unlikely however before the President leaves office and the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, meets the British prime minister Tony Blair in Dublin next Tuesday for a British-Irish Council meeting involving Ulster Unionist leader David Trimble.
It is understood there is a possibility Mr Blair could come to Belfast in advance of that meeting, but a spokesman for the Northern Ireland Office tonight said he was not prepared to comment on the prime minister's plans.
Mr Steinberg, a former National Security Council adviser in Washington, has been involved in efforts to break the impasse over IRA disarmament, demilitarisation and police reforms ever since Mr Clinton's visit to Northern Ireland in December.
As Mr Trimble again urged the IRA leadership to start emptying arms dumps, Dublin and Belfast sources confirmed he was in both cities at the end of last week meeting Government officials and Sinn Féin.
The British prime minister's official spokesman said Mr Steinberg had been "around for a few days" and was having talks with No 10 officials and with political figures, who were not named.
"There are officials from Washington and Dublin over here at the moment and it's really just because there has been an intensification of discussion in the last few days.
"It is in the context, in part, of President Clinton maintaining an interest right up to the end of his presidency," Mr Blair's spokesman said.
Government sources said the White House official's presence was a measure of how seriously President Clinton still held the cause of peace in Northern Ireland.
But the discovery of a huge bomb near Armagh city raised new worries among security chiefs on both sides of the border that dissident republicans could be gearing up for a fresh offensive in a bid to thwart any settlement.
Up to 1,000 lbs of explosives, possibly more, primed and ready for use are believed to have been found in two bins left by the roadside on the Monaghan Road, six miles outside the city.
RUC Chief Constable Sir Ronnie Flanagan said an attempt to blow up a passing police and military patrol had been foiled.
The bomb was first spotted on Saturday and this was the second failed bomb attack by dissident republicans opposed to the peace process inside 48 hours. Two police officers escaped unhurt when a blast bomb exploded at the rear of their patrol car in Cookstown, Co Tyrone.
PA