In comments which are likely to disappoint many Irish-Americans, the US administration's special representative for Northern Ireland has made clear that the US is not an advocate of a united Ireland - or of union with Britain.
Mr Richard Haass was responding to journalists' questions during a briefing on Thursday in the State Department on the week's series of meetings with the Taoiseach, the Northern Secretary, and Northern leaders. Mr Haass said that the issue was a matter to be resolved exclusively through the provisions of the Belfast Agreement.
He had been asked whether he approved of the call by the First Minister, Mr David Trimble, for a Border poll.
"The most important thing is to uphold the process of the Good Friday agreement," he said.
The agreement gave the Northern Secretary discretion on whether a poll "is warranted or desirable".
"What's most important for us is that the process is consistent with the Good Friday agreement, and that anything that is done ever to affect the political status of Northern Ireland will be based on the principle of consent.
"This is also a long-winded way of saying I don't hold, or, more importantly, the US government doesn't hold any particular preference or secret desire for the future political status of Northern Ireland.
"This is something to be worked out consistent with the Good Friday agreement by the people of the Republic and Northern Ireland itself."
Questioned about the three Sinn Féin supporters under arrest in Colombia, Mr Haass said the local "legal process needs to have integrity, to play out without interference from the US".
But he said the US administration had spoken to the Colombian authorities to press on them the need to ensure the prisoners received fair treatment, physical protection, and access to legal backup.
He said that the nature of FARC had to be understood. "They're not one of those romantic insurgencies helping to liberate the country." On the contrary, he said, they were "trading in drugs, killing people, and disrupting the democratic process."
The US had made "abundantly clear" it had "zero tolerance" for any support for the FARC.
While the US was more preocupied now with ensuring that all links had been severed, Mr Haass warned there could still be "consequences" for the IRA if it were established that what it was engaged in had a continuing effect on US citizens and interests.
He said that whether the IRA had sent members to train other guerrilla networks was still "an open question".
Asked about suggestions the US may be working on a programme to assist deprived Unionist areas, Mr Haass would only say ideas were being explored to improve the situation throughout the North.
The US, he said rather infelicitously, was anxious to find ways of "getting a bigger bang for our buck", specifically the $25 million voted by Congress every year.
On decommissioning, Mr Haass insisted that more still had to be done. "Decommissioning needs to be a verb, not a noun, a process, not an event."
Success on the issue and on policing were both key to demilitarisation: "the British do not wake up in the morning thinking how to keep troops in Northern Ireland."
