Mr David Ervine of the Progressive Unionist Party has said that the two governments are close to putting forward an initiative to end the political deadlock. Mr Ervine said he believed a more co-ordinated approach existed to finding a way to reactivate the Executive.
He has held meetings with the Taoiseach, the Northern Secretary and Mr David Trimble in recent days. "We are getting a sense that the two governments at last appear to be singing off the same hymn sheet and are trying to get some proposals together to put before the parties. I think that will happen before the May 22nd deadline," he said.
Even if the parties failed to reach agreement by that date, the peace process did not have to "die". He warned, however, that there was a need for whatever formula the governments reached to work. The failure to find consensus on a way to implement the Belfast Agreement had continually "kicked oxygen out of the public's belief" in the process.
Mr Ervine called on the parties to work together to prove "the nay-sayers" wrong. "One can almost hear them licking their lips at the thought of being able to tell us the agreement could not work and that they told us so."
The leader of the Ulster Democratic Party, the UDA's political wing, has said pro-agreement unionist parties must agree an approach on how to deal with the current political crisis.
Mr Gary McMichael said pro-agreement unionist parties "must form a consensus in our approach to the current crisis and enter a future negotiating process with a commonality of purpose so that the unionist position is consolidated.
"The failure of republicanism to take any responsibility to find a solution and their apparent abandonment of the Good Friday agreement cannot be allowed to stand in the way of those of us who wish to have the agreement implemented.
"All parties that are willing to reach a sensible and practical resolution of the impasse must put their shoulder to the wheel so that the process can be put back on the rails and the institutions revived."
The SDLP leader, Mr John Hume, has said the suspension of the Stormont institutions is inhibiting the North's role within the EU. He told an SDLP conference on Europe that the Assembly, Executive and cross-Border institutions had offered the North "an enhanced role within the wider European Union context".
He said: "The suspension of our political institutions is delaying the full realisation of this goal. A more concerted and co-ordinated approach to Border area development, in particular, is being held back as well as the opportunity for North and South to make a distinctive contribution to the development of the European Union as it plans for expansion.
"Against the background of our troubled history and our experiences of conflict resolution, we would have much to offer to the rest of Europe through the full operation of these institutions. What a terrible amount of time has been wasted which could have been spent healing our own wounds and contributing positively to the greater good, right across the European Union."