Tomorrow's talks at Hillsborough between the British and Irish governments and the North's political parties should bring forward an agenda for "completion" of the Belfast Agreement, the SDLP leader, Mr Mark Durkan, has said. The talks are being hosted jointly by the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair.
The meeting, sources for the two governments say, is an important "staging post" in the quest for a deal to end the political impasse.
An early breakthrough is being discounted at the moment, but there is a recognition, especially on the British side, that significant progress towards a deal needs to be made in advance of visits to Washington by delegations from both governments and the Northern parties in the week before St Patrick's Day.
It is not expected that firm ideas will be submitted to the parties at Hillsborough tomorrow,
Mr Durkan, speaking to The Irish Times at Stormont, said that what was needed was a deal to restore devolution whereby nothing more would be demanded than the terms of the Belfast Agreement and nothing more should be demanded for its implementation.
He stressed what he saw as the importance of ending a situation where parties to the agreement demanded more from others before they committed further to the agreement themselves.
"On the one hand people are going to have to know that nothing more in the future is going to be demanded than its [the agreement's] delivery," he said.
"On the other hand, people have to know that in the future nothing more is going to be demanded for its delivery."
His call is in tune with efforts by Dublin and London for a once-and-for-all push to establish the agreement and the institutions it provides for and to end the sense of political crisis which had dogged it since 1998.
The British government says publicly that the Assembly election planned for May 1st should go ahead and that there are "no plans" for postponement.
But Dublin and London are more insistent in private that the election timetable be adhered to.
The SDLP also wants elections, and Mr Durkan insisted he could lead a similarly-sized or larger party of Assembly members into a restored Stormont.
He demanded what he calls "a compact for completion" for all of the agreement, and not just part of it. He also wants a definitive deal, not one based on "promise and prospect".
He said that the approach adopted to date - he called it "the ping-pong of recrimination" - only fostered mistrust and damaged confidence and led to fudges on all sides.
"We are very clear that we want a compact for completion, and it is not just deparamilitarisation on the one hand and demilitarisation on the other," he added.
Mr Durkan is understood to believe privately that the Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble, is on for a deal, despite his non-attendance at round-table talks, but also that he remains too focused on the possibility of election postponement.
Unionists continue to say that nothing is possible politically without an unambiguous end to all paramilitary activity.
However, republican sources insist with equal fervour that believable commitments from unionists to align themselves with the new political set-up are also needed.
Sinn Féin is also stressing its calls for greater progress on British army demilitarisation, especially in south Armagh, or "normalisation", as British officials refer to it.
Republicans also want further police reforms and progress on a wide range of human rights and equality issues.