The Fianna Fail leader indicated yesterday his party may accept an election in the North if it leads to all party talks immediately afterwards.
Speaking on RTE radio, Mr Ahern stressed that he saw "no guarantee" that such talks would follow an election. He was worried that Mr John Major was already talking about the "nuts and bolts" of an assembly.
He predicted that unionists would create further obstacles and preconditions to talks if an election was agreed.
The Fianna Fail leader said he would need assurances that all party talks would immediately follow such an election. "I would need to see it written in black and white, and signed by the Tanaiste and others, before I would agree that there was any prospect of an assembly election at this stage."
Meanwhile, the Alliance Party leader, Dr John Alderdice, said the failure to reach agreement on the forum report reflected political realities. "I think people would be ill advised to regard it as any kind of failure on the part of the forum," he said.
The Forum for Peace and Reconciliation had helped politicians in the Republic to come to grips with some of the complexities of issues in the North. The Green Party said yesterday that the difference between the parties at the forum was small and it was the collective collapse of both imagination and will that caused its regrettable failure to agree a common document.
The party said it was opposed to "crude majoritarian" decision making and it advocated advanced consensus based decision making. It pointed out that bit was ready to sign up in full to the document, had a full consensus been achieved.