Northern Ireland's First Minister, Mr David Trimble, met President Clinton in Washington yesterday morning for a briefing on recent progress in the peace process. But US officials and officials of Mr Trimble's Ulster Unionist Party remained tight-lipped on the details of the discussions.
The second crucial meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council to determine the party's participation in Northern Ireland's powersharing Executive is expected to be held on Saturday, February 5th.
Before Mr Trimble's US visit, speculation centred on whether he would use the meeting to push the Clinton administration to pressure Sinn Fein on the decommissioning of paramilitary arms.
A UUP spokeswoman in Washington would say only that Mr Trimble had held a private meeting with the President to talk over the peace process. The First Minister had decided to keep the trip low-key and would not comment to the press, she said.
A Clinton administration official said Mr Trimble had met the President at the White House for the better part of an hour to discuss the full implementation of the Good Friday accord.
But an Ulster Unionist source characterised the meeting as a "final wrap-up" of details after the Mitchell Review of the Belfast Agreement and a settling of unfinished business. Weapons decommissioning had been on the agenda, the source said.
"We're basically expressing our need and desire for decommissioning to happen sooner rather than later," the source said.
Mr Trimble has suggested he will resign if there is no sign of movement on decommissioning before the Ulster Unionist Council's next meeting in February.
Before leaving Northern Ireland, Mr Trimble and the Deputy First Minister, Mr Seamus Mallon, said decommissioning was imperative if the advances made so far were to hold. Mr Trimble was scheduled to leave the United States last night.
UUP sources indicated that the meeting of the party's council would resume on the first Saturday in February.
However, there has been a sharp reminder that the party's membership of the Executive is still conditional on an early start to IRA decommissioning.
Mr Trimble won the endorsement of the council to proceed on the basis of the Mitchell Review by 58 per cent to 42 per cent at the first meeting, on November 27th - but only after placing a post-dated letter of resignation with the party president, Mr Josias Cunningham, to take immediate effect if IRA decommissioning had not begun by an unspecified date in February.
The hopeful assumption in some political and official circles was that the second, decisive ballot might be postponed until late in that month. But Mr Trimble surprised internal critics when he told a recent meeting of the party executive of his intention to have the issue decided on February 5th.
An official spokesman for the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, said yesterday he was aware that active consideration was being given to a change in the rules which would give Sinn Fein MPs access to Westminster, without formally taking their seats.
But he suggested such a move would almost certainly require a resolution of the House of Commons.