The British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, has said "the omens are good" for an agreement between Sinn Féin and the Ulster Unionists enabling Assembly elections to take place "in a positive and constructive atmosphere".
Speaking alongside the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, at the mid-way point during five hours of negotiations in Downing Street yesterday, Mr Blair said that the parties were still talking through the issues was itself "a tremendous achievement". While he could not say and did not yet know if the Sinn Féin/Ulster Unionist dialogue would succeed, the Prime Minister told reporters: "The general atmosphere, the climate is conducive to finding a way forward and I hope we can because we owe it to the people of Northern Ireland."
The Taoiseach echoed Mr Blair's desire to have elections against the backdrop of an agreement enabling the restoration of the institutions of government: "I think the attitude of all the parties I have spoken to in recent weeks has been to try and achieve that."
However, Mr Ahern said there were still a number of outstanding issues to be resolved, adding that it was "not easy" and that the present process could not go on "indefinitely".
Mr Blair and Mr Ahern also sought to place yesterday's summit in the context of their talks with the other parties during recent weeks, making particular reference to their most recent meetings with an SDLP leadership strikingly absent from yesterday's proceedings.
The US special adviser on Northern Ireland, Mr Richard Haass, was present throughout yesterday's series of bilateral and round-table talks and will resume separate talks with the parties in Belfast this morning.
Following the Taoiseach's departure, the Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble, and the Sinn Féin president, Mr Gerry Adams, spoke to journalists outside Number 10 before resuming their dialogue at the nearby Northern Ireland Office.
Sounding slightly more upbeat than Mr Trimble, Mr Adams declared: "As far as we are concerned we are taking it that the election is going ahead anyway.
"That for us is a matter of political principle." Describing "a series of positive engagements" yesterday and over the weekend, Mr Adams cautioned that "a big job of work" remained to be done if the parties and the two governments were to bridge the gap on the outstanding issues.
With "sustainability of the institutions" of government, policing, and paramilitary and British "acts of completion" still on the table, Mr Adams said: "What we are trying is unprecedented. It is challenging for the unionists as well as for republicans and the two governments." While refusing to be drawn on the timetable for decisions about an election date, the Sinn Féin president continued: "Our conviction is that whatever happens in the shorter term, in the long term all of these issues are going to be resolved."
Mr Trimble said the current effort would not fail "for want of effort on our part". The UUP leader agreed there had been "useful work done" during the summit and confirmed the dialogue would continue.
"I hope there will eventually be a successful outcome to this but that's just not here yet." He continued: "We need to see that there is going to be decommissioning of weapons, an end of paramilitary activity, people being fully committed to working with the institutions in the spirit of the (Belfast) Agreement and we haven't quite got all of that yet." Despite this caution, Mr Trimble rejected one question suggesting that people had witnessed such negotiations before, only to see things "fall apart" at the last minute. People had seen "the very significant progress" made in Northern Ireland "thanks to efforts of this nature", he said. Acknowledging that there had been " a sense of things falling apart" a year ago when the Assembly was suspended, Mr Trimble went on: "What we are now trying to do is encourage republicans to do the things necessary to help put (the institutions) back together again, and I don't despair of that effort and I don't think anybody else should."