The Taoiseach and the British Prime Minister plan to return to Hillsborough on Thursday week - the fifth anniversary of the Belfast Agreement - to present the parties with their blueprint for restoring devolution to Northern Ireland.
Meanwhile, Sinn Féin has confirmed that it won't make a final decision on whether to endorse the Police Service of Northern Ireland until after the Assembly elections scheduled for May 29th.
"It will not be this side of the election," said the party's policing spokesman, Mr Gerry Kelly, yesterday.
Mr Ahern and Mr Blair have chosen April 10th in Hillsborough Castle to present their package of proposals which they hope will be endorsed by the pro-agreement parties, and that will trigger a positive response from the IRA, according to reliable sources.
The two leaders also hope that the timing of their meeting in Hillsborough will prove propitious as the date coincides with the fifth calendar anniversary of the agreement, which was signed on Good Friday 1998.
While the war in Iraq could interfere with the planned publication of the document, sources said Mr Blair was anxious that the Hillsborough meeting should go ahead with Mr Ahern.
The British and Irish governments adopted a sanguine approach to Sinn Féin's announcement yesterday that the party will not decide on whether to join the Policing Board until after the Assembly elections.
Sinn Féin waited until yesterday before stating categorically that a special ardfheis on policing would not be held until some time after May 29th.
Its president, Mr Gerry Adams, hinted at the weekend that a decision on whether to support the PSNI might have to be delayed, but curiously he did not avail of his keynote address to the Sinn Féin conference on Saturday to announce this decision to the delegates in the RDS.
The former SDLP deputy leader, Mr Séamus Mallon, said last week that Sinn Féin joining the Policing Board before elections should be designated one of the acts of completion necessary to allow the Northern institutions to be reinstated.
Had the two governments accepted this proposal, Mr Kelly's announcement could have forced the governments to again postpone the Assembly elections until Sinn Féin had finally declared its position on policing.
Dublin and London sources said yesterday, however, that what was most pressing was a major act of decommissioning from the IRA and a demonstration that the organisation was ending all paramilitary activity.
The sources said the two governments hoped Sinn Féin would at least signal that it favoured joining the board ahead of the elections. With such an indication there should be little difficulty in the elections proceeding as scheduled, they added.
Mr Kelly said policing was a huge issue for Sinn Féin, and a decision could not be taken lightly. "This is a very deep, running issue. It has been described often as as big as the Good Friday agreement itself. What we need to do is get it right," he said.
A senior Sinn Féin source added that if the leadership decided to endorse the PSNI, time was needed to win the support of the broader party.
"There is no point calling a special ardfheis too speedily and only winning the debate, say, by 60 per cent-40 per cent, with all the divisions that that would cause," he said.
A UUP spokesman said the party could probably tolerate Sinn Féin postponing its decision on the Policing Board, if the IRA illustrated that its "war is over" and carried out a major act of disarmament.
The anti-agreement UUP MP, the Rev Martin Smyth, suggested, however, that unionists should follow Sinn Féin's example by also delaying their response to the Ahern-Blair blueprint. Mr Smyth said Sinn Féin was "once more getting concessions laid on its plate, and then deciding there is no rush to deliver its end".
The SDLP leader, Mr Mark Durkan, accused Sinn Féin of "speaking with forked tongue" on policing. Sinn Féin's decision on policing should have no bearing on the Hillsborough package, he added.
The DUP spokesman on policing, Mr Ian Paisley jnr MLA, said: "The real issue here is handing policing in terms of policy to the likes of Gerry Kelly and handing justice to the likes of Alex Maskey.
"That's the real issue and that's what we should be making sure doesn't happen in the short, medium and long term."
