The British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, and the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, will hold urgent talks on the worsening political situation in Northern Ireland before St Patrick's Day.
This was signalled last night as Whitehall sources acknowledged that the present review of the Belfast Agreement "is unlikely to produce a positive outcome".
The Taoiseach said yesterday that "the continuation of paramilitary activity by the republican movement negates any prospect of achieving inclusive partnership politics in Northern Ireland".
The pressure on the British and Irish governments to act intensified last night when the Conservative Party urged the Northern Ireland Secretary, Mr Paul Murphy, to withdraw his recognition of the IRA ceasefire by "specifying" the Provisionals among those organisations still concerned with terrorism or otherwise failing to maintain a complete ceasefire.
The Secretary of State is empowered by the Northern Ireland Sentences Act, 1998, to "specify" an organisation. Once so "specified", an organisation becomes subject to the emergency legislation passed after the Omagh bombing in 1998 and subsequently contained in the Terrorism Act, 2000. This provides for the admissibility in court of a statement by a senior police officer that in his opinion an accused person is a member of a specified organisation.
Commenting on the most recent evidence of paramilitary activity by mainstream republicans, the shadow secretary of state, Mr David Lidington, said: "Nearly a fortnight ago the Chief Constable of the PSNI confirmed emphatically that the Provisional IRA - which is supposed to be observing a complete and unequivocal ceasefire - was involved in the beating and attempted abduction of Bobby Tohill in Belfast."
Speaking on Wednesday to the Northern Ireland Policing Board, he said that during the past year the PIRA had been responsible for around the same number of paramilitary assaults as the Ulster Defence Association - "around one a week".
He said that following the Tohill incident, charges of PIRA membership against four people had to be dropped because the organisation was not "specified" and therefore not subject to emergency legislation.
"Like PIRA, the UDA maintains that it is on a ceasefire. Yet the Secretary of State does not recognise that ceasefire and since October 2001 that organisation has been specified. In the light of the Chief Constable's comments over the past fortnight, and the range of paramilitary activity in which PIRA is involved, the time has surely come for the Secretary of State to consider adding this illegal terrorist group to the list of 'specified' organisations.
"Such a move might at last start to demonstrate to the people of Northern Ireland that this process is not all one-way traffic and that there are no special favours for the republican movement."