There is a surreal atmosphere in Stormont these days. In the chamber, members have been debating the nitty-gritty of Standing Orders with impressive diligence and enthusiasm; nobody more so than the Democratic Unionist Party, which opposed the agreement which begat this Assembly.

At the same time, a cloud of uncertainty hangs over the future of the institution and the other allied bodies and councils agreed on Good Friday last year.

The crisis meeting between the Ulster Unionists and Sinn Fein, if one were to judge from the public pronouncements of Mr David Trimble and Mr Gerry Adams, gave relatively little cause for encouragement.

But the fact that the meeting took place at all was considered important. The length of the meeting - one hour and 25 minutes - was another bright spot. "It was significant more for its duration than its substance," senior UUP sources said.

There are plans to meet again, and UUP sources said this may well occur when the parties adjourn to the US at the weekend. "They were probably the most detailed discussions they had to date on the decommissioning issue," UUP sources added. "It is still our view that the problem can be resolved, but it requires a very determined level of leadership by the republican and loyalist paramilitaries."

It is clear, from various sources, that the meeting was not all sweetness. "Tetchy" was the most benign description. This was confirmed by another source, who said the First Minister took a very robust and forthright approach with Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness.

The Sinn Fein leaders are assertive and refused to budge from their position. They repeated that they could not deliver on IRA decommissioning to facilitate formation of the Northern executive.

When Mr Trimble emerged to face the media he said it was not a question of whether, but when, there would be decommissioning. That was not the analysis presented to him by Sinn Fein.

Mr Trimble's certainty that decommissioning will take place is unfeigned. Sources close to him said it was not just a political line: he believes it.

The response from republican sources to this is one of incredulity and even a certain sympathy for a political opponent who they believe has been seriously misled by elements in London and possibly Dublin into a misguided expectation that either guns or Semtex are on the table.

It has been observed in the past that, the longer these unionist-republican meetings last, the better the result. It is understood the last 10 minutes or so yesterday were the best part of the encounter. Mr Trimble was able to come out and tell the media it was a case of "Sinn Fein contra mundum".

For their part, the republicans were at last beginning to feel their message was reaching the UUP leader and that they had at last created a few chinks in the armour of his certainty that decommissioning was coming soon.

The "chemistry" between Mr Taylor and Mr McGuinness was better than between Mr Trimble and Mr Adams. There is a certain irony here, given that, among the unionist community in general, Mr McGuinness is said to be regarded with rather more political hostility than his party leader.

Meanwhile, reports of Monday's meeting between the Taoiseach and Mr Adams suggest that, despite the apparent equanimity of the photographs, it was "very, very heavy". The anger and puzzlement in the republican community over the Taoiseach's recent Sunday newspaper comments on decommissioning were conveyed by the Sinn Fein leader, sources said, along with an adjuration to adopt what republicans would consider a more balanced approach in the future.

Deadlines do concentrate the mind, and the closer we come to Good Friday, the more the false trails and dead ends are being ignored in favour of the main highway towards a resolution of the problem. The two main parties to the dispute, the UUP and Sinn Fein, may still be on a collision course but there is still the possibility either or both may swerve to avoid a crash.

The nature of that "swerve" is not discernible, but a clue to Sinn Fein's tactics was given in Mr Adams's column in this week's Irish Voice. Near the end of a fairly hardline article for the New York paper, he suddenly produced an olive branch in the form of an acknowledgement that, yes, ministers whose parties broke the pledge of non-violence should be excluded or removed from office.

It was an almost imperceptible gesture, and his more doctrinaire opponents will say he was only reiterating what is already in the agreement. But he was using language one does not hear every day from a republican leader, and it was an interesting echo of a suggestion that has been floating around for some time, particularly in SDLP circles, that strict enforcement of the terms of the pledge of office may be part of the solution to the current problem.

But there were no indications that this avenue was explored in any detail at yesterday's meeting, only that positions on both sides were clarified and the two parties now understand each other better than at any time in the past. In that sense it was accurate of Mr Trimble to say "a limited amount of progress was made".

When questioned further, he said: "I will deliberately keep myself just to that phrase." There are still no indications, however, that the UUP is retreating from its demand for guns as an essential requirement for forming the executive.

Although political insiders had warned there would be no miracles or magic formulae emerging from the meeting, the level of public expectation and media interest was very high. Since nobody was indicating in advance that a breakthrough was imminent, this may have been a reflection of the fact that so many people want the process to work: they are reluctant at this stage to admit the possibility of failure.