The UUP leader, Mr David Trimble, last night briefed White House officials on his view of the Mitchell review of the impasse over decommissioning.
After a 30-minute meeting with Mr Jim Steinberg, White House adviser on Northern Ireland, Mr Trimble said he had been in the US for a long-standing engagement and had found it useful to drop by Washington and give the White House an update on the review.
"Apart from that I just engaged in general observations exuding general goodwill, as is my wont, keeping the substance to an absolute minimum," he said.
Today on Capitol Hill he will meet leading members of the Ad Hoc Committee on Irish Affairs. He will also give a luncheon address on Northern Ireland at the Nixon Centre.
The White House has remained unusually tight-lipped following the meeting 24 hours earlier between President Clinton and Senator George Mitchell saying simply that "the President strongly supports what Senator Mitchell is doing".
Officials could not even say how long the meeting in the President's private quarters lasted on Wednesday night after Mr Mitchell flew from London where he had briefed the Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair. Earlier he had briefed the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern.
Mr Mike Hammer, a spokesman for the National Security Council which deals with Northern Ireland for the President, said the meeting was for the President "to get the senator's assessment of his review of the Good Friday agreement implementation and the President strongly supports what Senator Mitchell is doing".
Mr Hammer had told a news agency before the meeting the President may get directly involved in peace talks at some point.
He explained yesterday to The Irish Times that this is the "longstanding position" of the President with regard to Northern Ireland and "it does not signify that anything is in the works. That's just his view."
The President is ready to step in "if it's something that's needed but I don't want to signal that is something that's happening here," Mr Hammer said.
Asked if it would be wrong to speculate that Senator Mitchell has asked the President to become more directly involved in the peace process, Mr Hammer said: "That is correct."
In an address on the situation in Northern Ireland at Ball State University, Indiana, on Wednesday, Mr Trimble told students he was confident the basic political ideas of the Good Friday agreement would work but "we'll then have the enormous problem of trying to integrate society". Because of the animosities that have led to murder, integration "must be done slowly".