The latest British-Irish initiative to restore devolved government to Northern Ireland has run into difficulties just days after it was confirmed by the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, and the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern.
The two-stage plan - revealed in last Saturday's Irish Times - was understood to have originated in Mr Blair's talks with Sinn Féin leaders at Chequers a fortnight ago.
However, serious doubts have emerged over the IRA's willingness to engage in "acts of completion" prior to an all-party negotiation providing guarantees that the Rev Ian Paisley's DUP would in turn reinstate the power-sharing Executive and other institutions of the Belfast Agreement.
At the same time senior DUP sources have told The Irish Times there is no possibility of London and Dublin achieving the return of a power-sharing government by their declared target date of next October.
The DUP is also making it clear it does not consider the early devolution of policing and justice powers to the Northern Assembly an issue for any initial negotiation it might enter with Sinn Féin.
And the situation was further complicated last night as the Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble, signalled he does not consider the British government "obligated to Sinn Féin" in terms of any matters arising from his party's failed negotiation with the republicans ahead of last November's Assembly election.
Sources close to Mr Trimble insisted "commitments" given during that negotiation, and in last year's British-Irish Joint Declaration, were "contingent" upon IRA acts of completion and that to proceed to implement them without the complete cessation of all IRA activity would amount to "a major U-turn" by the British government.
It is understood Mr Blair has written to Dr Paisley confirming the understandings reached before Mr Trimble halted the planned sequence of statements involving the IRA, Sinn Féin, Gen de Chastelain (head of the International Decommissioning Commission), the Ulster Unionists and the two governments at Hillsborough last October.
Stage one of the proposed new initiative would see the British government move on its commitments in respect of security normalisation, two further areas of policing reform, and the process for dealing with "On The Run" fugitives (OTRs), who would otherwise have benefited from the prisoner release programme established under the Belfast Agreement.
The benign theory was that the DUP would tolerate this attempt by Mr Blair to break the political deadlock - on the basis that he was fulfilling commitments made while Mr Trimble was the majority unionist leader - while holding to its own, tougher terms for entering direct negotiations with Sinn Féin.
However, Mr Trimble's reported antagonism threatens to make any such moves a matter of dispute between the Blair government and the Conservatives and Ulster Unionists at Westminster.
In addition, usually authoritative political sources are suggesting real limits anyway on Mr Blair's capacity to move, while raising doubts about the willingness of the IRA to effectively declare itself out of business in return for the promise of talks which the DUP maintains would be about an "alternative" agreement.
On security normalisation, the sources say Mr Blair could only act in accordance with the assessment of the Chief Constable of the PSNI. And the calculation is that the government could lose the legislation granting an effective amnesty to the OTRs, unless Westminster opinion was satisfied that the IRA had ceased all paramilitary and criminal activities as required by paragraph 13 of the Joint Declaration.
Two outstanding issues of policing reform concern the creation of four District Policing Partnership Boards for Belfast, and the symbolically significant removal of criminal records for terrorist offences as a disqualification for "independent" members of DPPBs.
In the context of last autumn's negotiations, these would have been seen as incremental steps along the path to Sinn Féin's eventual decision to join the Policing Board. However, that in turn was predicated upon the emergent proposal for the devolution of policing and justice powers to the Assembly over a period of two to three years - again assuming IRA acts of completion.