The Ulster Unionist Party is set to abandon Wednesday's planned meeting of its ruling council as hopes fade that the IRA will offer more information about last week's weapons decommissioning.
Informal talks continued over the weekend between the UUP and Sinn Féin to find a way out of the logjam, while the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, spoke by telephone with the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, on Saturday.
The Government, however, is holding out little hope that a solution will be found before the November 26th Assembly elections. "No significant development is now expected," said a spokesperson.
The UUP leader, Mr David Trimble, will call off Wednesday's meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council if a further statement from the IRA is not made before tomorrow afternoon, the party told The Irish Times.
Mr Trimble yesterday once again demanded greater IRA clarity. "The simple truth of the matter is that invisible acts don't really weigh very much with the general public."
He said the IRA had promised in May 2000 that decommissioning acts would "maximise public confidence", and yet it was clear that last Tuesday's decommissioning event had failed to achieve that aim.
"We told them very clearly months ago, and as recently as last week or the week before, that if you do it in secret it's not going to be effective," said the UUP leader.
The UUP Assembly election campaign will get under way in earnest today, with the broadcasting of the party's first election broadcast on local television channels tonight.
The election campaign will "close down" the possibility of progress, though Mr Trimble expressed confidence that a solution would be found "in the longer term. I have no doubt but that that will happen."
However, pro-Belfast Agreement UUP candidates are deeply concerned that last Tuesday's collapse has left them with nothing to put before an increasingly despondent unionist electorate.
"SF and the IRA don't realise what they have done. We are an endangered species. Who do they think they will have to talk to after all of this is over?" a UUP Assembly figure told The Irish Times.
Warning that Mr Trimble had caused "great damage", the Sinn Féin president, Mr Gerry Adams, said many republicans were now convinced that the UUP would always continue to demand an extra concession.
"Every time we move the process forward from the republican perspective we are told that another little bit is needed. It is impossible to quantify the damage caused by the UUP stepping outside the process."
He insisted that the UUP leader had been shown, and had accepted, the text of both his own statement and the later one from the IRA before Tuesday's meeting in Hillsborough.
Accepting this point, a UUP spokesman said. "That is the case, but the issue is de Chastelain. We had told SF that we needed transparency and openness about decommissioning."
Officials from the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Department of the Taoiseach were in contact last evening with Sinn Féin and UUP representatives.
The cancellation of the Unionist Council meeting is not of crucial significance, according to the Government. "It would be a natural deadline if it was there, but we never set Wednesday as a deadline," said an Irish source
Still angry about the way in which the SDLP has been sidelined by the two governments, the party's deputy leader, Ms Bríd Rodgers, warned that last-minute IRA concessions will not help. "The whole thing has been ruined. The deal will be seen as being shop-soiled, as it were, even if the IRA did something now. A lot of damage has been done to public confidence."
