Elections to the Northern Ireland Assembly were postponed by the Taoiseach and British Prime Minister early this morning in an effort to secure agreement in the coming months on restoring devolution, write Gerry Moriarty, Mark Hennessy and Dan Keenan
While talks at Hillsborough Castle broke up shortly after midnight without the pro-agreement parties reaching a final blueprint to restore the institutions, Mr Ahern and Mr Blair agreed to push back the elections until May 29th to give the parties more time.
The Taoiseach and Prime Minister intend to return to Belfast in April to publish their plan.
"We are not talking about negotiations. We believe we have got a good way forward," said Mr Blair early today shortly before he departed Hillsborough.
Emphasising the governments' plan was final, Mr Blair said: "I think there is a very large measure of agreement and where there isn't agreeement, people know where the governments are going."
Speaking at the joint press conference, Mr Ahern said: "We have not, perhaps, been able to resolve every point to a conclusion, but we have certainly moved it a long way forward".
Both leaders said that they hoped all the Northern parties would take away the governments' blueprint for discussion with their members over coming weeks.
Mr Blair said: "We ask that people are patient over this coming period of time and do not judge the agreement by partial leaks but concentrate on what we are trying to achieve here".
A bitter stand-off between Sinn Féin and the Ulster Unionist Party over how to penalise anyone defaulting on the Belfast Agreement prevented the parties from agreeing a package.
The Sinn Fein President, Mr Gerry Adams, said the party leadership would reflect on the document with close colleagues.
"We don't accept sanctions against any party if those sanctions are outside the terms of the Good Friday agreement. We are responsible for our party, we are not accountable for anyone else," Mr Adams said after the talks broke up early this morning.
While acknowledging Mr Blair's assertion that there would be no more negotiations, the SDLP leader, Mr Mark Durkan, said he believed "on past experience that there will be negotiations at some level".
Irish and British officials last night put an unspecified compromise proposal to Sinn Féin and the UUP which they hoped would break the deadlock. Their attempts at a compromise were frustrated by the departure at 7 p.m. of the UUP leader, Mr David Trimble.
Ulster Unionist sources said he had parliamentary business at Westminster today and had not walked out. However, there was no explanation as to what parliamentary business required Mr Trimble to be in London.
In Mr Trimble's absence, Sir Reg Empey, led the UUP delegation and telephoned Mr Trimble on several occasions.
Mr Trimble said unionists "needed an effective system of oversight and monitoring with sanctions so that we can be sure that the governments this time will genuinely discharge their functions".
Initially Mr McLaughlin said Sinn Féin could not tolerate postponing the election but later softened his position. "It is not something we would die in a ditch for," he said.
During the afternoon significant progress was made on criminal justice reform. Sources from the governments and parties said issues such as demilitarisation, equality and human rights and the Irish language were close to resolution, subject to agreement on the wider package.
Earlier, in an attempt to put pressure on the parties a Downing Street source told UTV that this would be the last opportunity for Mr Blair to engage so intensely on Northern Ireland, given the demands of the Iraqi crisis.