Senior Ulster Unionists are privately predicting the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, will give the go-ahead for fresh elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly.
At the same time authoritative British sources are now saying "it would be very difficult" to postpone the Stormont poll scheduled for May 1st. Although stressing the issue has not yet been decided, the latest indications of Whitehall thinking provide the clearest signal to date that Mr Blair may well bow to Sinn Féin and Irish Government insistence that the Assembly elections should proceed, regardless of the outcome of current negotiations.
These are centring around Mr Blair's demand for IRA "acts of completion" and republican demands for reciprocal British moves on a range of issues including demilitarisation and further policing reform.
The Sinn Féin president, Mr Gerry Adams, emerged from Downing Street talks last Thursday declaring himself "sceptical" about British assurances that Mr Blair intended the elections should proceed.
Downing Street's line until now has been that their focus is on a deal on "acts of completion" which would permit the reinstatement of the suspended Assembly and Executive, thus rendering questions about the timing of elections irrelevant.
However a detectable mood change in London appears to be rooted in an assessment that Ulster Unionist Party Assembly members - facing a bitter contest against the DUP - calculate that their best electoral chance lies in the prior successful restoration of devolved government.
While that may be strictly correct, the UUP leader and former First Minister, Mr David Trimble, continues to insist he has no knowledge of any potential deal between the British government and Sinn Féin likely to tempt him back into the power sharing administration, at least in the short term.
The leading UUP dissident, Mr Jeffrey Donaldson MP, has also issued a fresh reminder that any proposed return to power-sharing with Sinn Féin would first face a test of opinion at another meeting of the ruling Ulster Unionist Council ahead of any Assembly elections.
Uncertainty about Mr Trimble's ability to deliver his side of any agreement in the teeth of an election - and the strong possibility that an anti-Agreement unionist majority could emerge after it - also seems certain to weigh heavily on republican calculations about the likely or possible pace of developments.
Some of Mr Trimble's party opponents are suggesting he might publicly oppose any deal between the British government and Sinn Féin as "insufficient", while bowing to the reality that an election will take place and choosing to remain outside the Executive at' least until later in the year.
However Mr Blair's advisers are seized of the weakness of such a position and acknowledge it' would be likely to grow weaker-still under the pressures of an election campaign, hence the continuing intensive effort to secure "acts of completion" sufficient to persuade the UUP leader to take yet another political gamble to try and rescue the Belfast Agreement.
Mr Trimble has not ruled out such a possibility, just last week firmly rejecting reports that he had already decided he could only fight an election while the Executive remained suspended.
However Mr Donaldson's supporters say they are convinced the time available between any conclusion of the current negotiations and a mid-March confirmation of an election date would be insufficient to enable Mr Trimble to cultivate the degree of unionist confidence necessary to withstand the electoral challenge of the DUP.
In such circumstances, they say, the Ulster Unionist Council would dictate an election policy not dissimilar to the DUP promise to force a renegotiation of the agreement.
Trimble using Sinn Féin's 'anti- US' policies as smokescreen: page 12