The Northern Secretary, Dr John Reid, yesterday played down hopes of any immediate breakthrough in the peace process.
As he prepared to join discussions in Downing Street last night with the Taoiseach and Mr Tony Blair, he said he would be deluding people if he said it would be easy to move forward.
There is growing speculation in the North that a deal to end the political deadlock is imminent. However, speaking yesterday during a visit to Lisburn, Co Antrim, Dr Reid stressed there was no quick fix to resolving the issues of decommissioning, demilitarisation and policing.
He said there was no deadline on the current negotiations. However, he added: "They can't go on and on, but the process of establishing normality, the process of establishing stability is not something that will be over in a week or a month."
In a sense, there was an urgency because the public wanted to see further progress. But most people, if they looked back, would see how far the North had come.
It behoved everyone, not just himself, but the parties to the agreement, to shoulder the responsibility of achieving progress. He described last night's Downing Street dinner meeting between Mr Blair and Mr Ahern as "a stocktaking exercise" to see how far they had come and how far they had to go.
"I don't want to raise false hopes or expectations because I have always said this is a painstaking process which involves sensitivity, which involves every side giving something and hopefully the whole community getting something out of it. It is a prize worth getting."
Commenting on continuing loyalist violence, he said it was obvious individuals were involved in inflicting terrible pain, but overall the loyalist ceasefires were holding.
Dr Reid would not be drawn on new reports of security-force collusion in loyalist murders of Catholics during the 1980s. The investigation by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner, Sir John Stevens, was continuing and he did not wish to predict what that report would say.
Mr Gerry Adams yesterday also played down hopes of an imminent political breakthrough. With speculation increasing that the SDLP was close to signing up to the new Policing Board, he warned parties not to be pressured into accepting anything less than a fully reformed service.
The Sinn Fein president said there was still a wide gap between his party and the British government. "It is very important that all of us who actually want a threshold that can allow us to endorse a new policing service aren't shoe-horned into accepting less than that.
"I can see no basis in which either the Catholic Hierarchy or the SDLP can at this point agree to, or accept, the type of policing proposals offered by the British government," he said.