WHILE Government sources admit they have no expectations of any significant progress at today's "informal meeting" between the Tanaiste and Northern Secretary, senior officials insist that both governments can still achieve the goal of all party talks on June 10th.
Mr Spring and Sir Patrick Mayhew are scheduled to hold talks at the Department of Foreign Affairs this afternoon, concentrating on finding a way out of the arms decommissioning impasse. But no advancement on how they intend to handle the issue is expected prior to Thursday's Northern elections.
Despite the difficulties in reaching agreement, the meeting between the two men is not expected to be lengthy, as the Tanaiste leaves for an EU Troika meeting in Rome this evening.
Senior Government sources said the entire process had frequently been marked by an impasse in advance of any major development. The present deadlock could be resolved, albeit at the 11th hour, but there was a joint government commitment to hold inclusive negotiations and that remained intact, they said.
However, there are no clues as, to how the two sides might get round the problem of not allowing decommissioning to block the negotiations.
The leader of the Progressive Democrats, Ms Mary Harney, yesterday expressed concern at the failure so far to resolve the decommissioning problem.
There was "an onus" on the two governments to finalise matters today, and it was "pointless to have a meeting two days before the elections if they cannot agree". It would have been far better to postpone today's discussions and wait until they could produce something more concrete after the election, she said.
The Fianna Fail chief whip Mr Dermot Ahern, said it would be far better if the approach to decommissioning could be sorted out by the two governments prior to the elections.
Fianna Fail remained "particularly worried" that decommissioning was continuing to "raise its head despite the convoluted procedure to get to all party talks".