The presence of US envoy Mr Richard Haass at the talks could beimportant over coming days, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
The American accent of Mr Richard Haass amid the clamour of British and Irish voices in a crowded No 10 Downing Street yesterday was of significance.
In the spring he made a proposal to Sinn Féin president Mr Gerry Adams that could yet form the basis of a deal that would lead to Assembly elections leading on to a restored Executive, Assembly and all the other institutions of the Belfast Agreement.
Remember that elections were again postponed in May after the British and Irish governments rejected statements from the IRA that seemed to suggest the organisation might go out of business.
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, at the time said they liked the words from P. O'Neill, but they needed specifics.
They wanted the IRA to state it would end a range of activity, as mentioned in paragraph 13 of the Hillsborough joint declaration, such as "punishment" attacks, intelligence gathering, exiling, and arms procurement.
Mr Haass, who will again be on the periphery of the negotiations in Belfast today, suggested to Mr Adams he should attempt to "bridge the gap" between what non-specifically was on offer from the IRA and what Dublin, London and the Ulster Unionists specifically required.
That's what the coming days of negotiations, privately involving Mr Adams and Mr Trimble and their senior teams of negotiators, will be concentrated upon: to agree a form of wording that the IRA would deliver that would reasonably convincingly persuade pro-Belfast Agreement unionists that it was going out of business.
As to the possibility of a breakthrough in the coming days - while there is progress it's probably wisest to hedge bets at this stage. We have been here before. Expectations have been raised only to be dashed before.
"The mood is neutral but positive," said a British source.
"The atmosphere in Downing Street was good but more negotiations are needed," was the line from Dublin.
"There was some very positive engagement but more work is needed," said a Sinn Féin official. "More work to do," said an Ulster Unionist source.
Thursday, November 13th, is the favoured date for an Assembly poll. The indications yesterday were that the main players could tolerate that date being put back by days or even a couple of weeks if a deal was attainable.
So, some hope but little detail, although everybody knows the formula required to solve this long-running political puzzle - the IRA indicating it is ending its war and Mr Trimble pledging to maintain the stability of the institutions.
The governments, Sinn Féin and the UUP are still aiming for a full, rather than half a deal. The latter - some decommissioning and unsatisfactory words from the IRA - might still be enough to allow for elections, but the odds then would be in favour of anti-agreement unionists being in the ascendant in the Assembly - if it ever could re-assemble.
Will republicans do enough to give pro-agreement unionists a better than 50:50 chance of overcoming their No unionist opponents in the election? That's still unanswerable.
A senior Sinn Féin source, however, insisted that recent comments to BBC Radio Ulster from Mr Martin McGuinness represented the true position of republicans.
His comments are worth quoting in full. "I don't want to say anything that would damage the prospects of progressive forces within unionism achieving a successful outcome," said Mr McGuinness, when asked did he want pro-agreement unionists to do well in the election.
He continued: "Let me put it like this - I don't want to see the Democratic Unionist Party, I don't want to see the negative forces within the Ulster Unionist Party moving into the ascendancy. I think that would be an absolute disaster for the peace process, a disaster for the Good Friday agreement, and would not be in the interest of the Protestant-unionist, Catholic-republican-nationalist people of this island.
"Those people who harbour the notion that there are people within the Democratic Unionist Party at leadership level, other than Ian Paisley, who would be pragmatic in the short term are badly mistaken. In the longer term they will be more pragmatic, because the process will convince them that they should be, but within the short term there is no prospect whatsoever of the DUP cutting a deal with either the SDLP or Sinn Féin."
The logic of Mr McGuinness's remarks is that the IRA and Sinn Féin are genuinely up for a comprehensive deal, and that they realise that if they don't have David Trimble to work with in government the likelihood is that they will have nobody to work with. We should know soon whether logic can at last have a place in Northern Ireland politics.