A major effort to get the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive back into operation will be made immediately after St Patrick's Day, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, agreed in Dublin last night. Mark Hennessy, Political Correspondent, reports.
The Taoiseach will now meet with US President Mr George Bush in the White House on Wednesday, followed by meetings with a number of other political players.
Mr Ahern and Mr Blair held several hours of talks in Farmleigh last evening, though the discussions were overshadowed by the terrorist attack in Madrid that left nearly 200 people dead.
Emphasising the need for urgency, Mr Ahern said the peace process is faced with "enormous dangers" if the Northern institutions are not brought back into life quickly.
"The elections were in November. This is March. The worst time of all is when there is a vacuum. We have no intention of letting it drift to the local elections, never mind any elections after that. We really want to deal with it in the next few weeks," said Mr Ahern.
However, he warned that the Assembly and the Executive would have collapsed if they had been in place before the attack and attempted kidnapping of the dissident Belfast republican, Mr Bobby Tohill.
He said the same two significant hurdles that have bedevilled the peace process - continuing acts of violence by paramilitarism and doubts about the willingness of Unionists to share power - remained in the way.
"We want an end to paramilitarism in all its forms. Equally, we want certainty and clarity about getting an inclusive working administration," Mr Ahern said.
The Northern Ireland parties involved in the review of the Good Friday Agreement would face pressure to make progress from Dublin and London after all sides return to Ireland following the St Patrick Day's celebrations.
The Democratic Unionist Party will also send a delegation to Washington, although they will not take part in the more high-profile events traditionally associated with St Patrick's Day.
The leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, Mr David Trimble, will also be in Washington, though Mr Reg Empey, who may shortly launch a leadership challenge, will not be joining him.
Speaking during a break in their meeting, Mr Blair said the two governments wanted "to flush everything out in the open" in the talks that will resume on March 22nd. The "basic principles" had been set out in his 2001 "acts of completion" speech and in paragraph 13 of the Joint Declaration agreed last year by Dublin and London.
All of the political parties, said Mr Blair, want paramilitarism to end and stable political institutions created. "We want to make sure that what everybody has been saying happens. It isn't a very complicated task."
Rejecting the charge from Sinn Féin president Mr Gerry Adams that he is preparing to exclude SF from the talks, Mr Ahern said he was trying "to do the opposite: I am trying to get them back into inclusive government.
"Sinn Féin got the highest number of nationalist votes in the elections. I know that we have had some hard and harsh words and I know why that was the case: it was because of the Tohill case.
"In my view, if the institutions had been in place before the Tohill case they would have gone again. It would not have been my fault. It would not have been the Irish Government's fault." He welcomed the announcement by the International Monitoring Commission to produce a "sharp, focused" inquiry into the actions of paramilitaries. "We support that, the sooner the better."