Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams will today meet Irish-American supporters a day ahead of the British and Irish governments' deadline for responses to their plan for restoring power-sharing at Stormont.
The West Belfast MP left for the United States yesterday for a round of meetings with key Irish-Americans and will also take part in a fund-raising dinner in New York for his party.
Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams
Mr Adams will attend a $500-a-head dinner in Manhattan hosted by the Friends of Sinn Féin, which is the party's biggest fundraiser in the United States.
Last year Mr Adams was forced to address the audience by a live satellite link from Dublin when he was barred from fundraising by the US government because of his party's failure to support the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
The brief visit is being viewed as encouragement by President George Bush's administration for Sinn Féin to change its policy on policing in the wake of the St Andrew's roadmap for devolution.
US Congressman Martin Meehan, a Democrat from Massachusetts, is due in Belfast today for a two-day visit where he will meet community and business leaders as well as politicians.
His visit precedes the arrival next week of a delegation of US congressmen from the Friends of Ireland Group.
Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and Prime Minister Tony Blair
have told
Northern Ireland politicians they want them
to indicate by tomorrow whether they will follow the timetable for devolution proposed at last month's St Andrews' talks.
The Democratic Unionists have yet to formally declare their hand but have been arguing that the St Andrew proposals are an advance for unionism on the 1998 Belfast Agreement.
Sinn Féin on Monday gave its qualified backing to the plan. However, Sinn Féin's is refusing to hold an ardfheis on policing until a date is given for the transfer of powers over policing and justice from London to Stormont.