The latest attempt to advance the Northern talks ended in failure last night amid recriminations between the Ulster Unionists and the SDLP. However, the chairman, Senator George Mitchell, and other senior politicians remained resolutely optimistic that progress would be made when the talks resume on January 12th.
Speaking in Boston, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said that he had "no great worry" about the failure to reach agreement yesterday. He believed that the parties had "effectively agreed the heads of agreement" already and that there was some "play-acting" going on.
The so-called sub-group, consisting of the party leaders and one other representative, met at Stormont throughout the day, but failed to reach agreement on the key issues for discussion in the process.
SDLP sources said that the Ulster Unionists had "got it in the neck" from all the other parties because of their "gratuitous leaking" about an "alleged agreement" on the key issues between themselves and the SDLP.
For their part, sources in the UUP insisted that an agreement had been made with the main nationalist party but that the party's deputy leader, Mr Seamus Mallon, was the only SDLP representative prepared to stand by the deal.
Questioned about this, Mr Mallon said that he was not going to break confidences. "Our party stands by its word", he added.
Senator Mitchell told reporters that, while the participants had not reached agreement, there was a significant measure of common ground. He added: "The real question is whether the participants are prepared to deal with the issues in a serious way. I believe they are."
This point was repeated by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Andrews, who said that the exercise had been valuable in establishing "a lot of common ground".
Senior political sources said that a deal on the key issues which was agreed last week between SDLP representatives and the UUP came undone when Sinn Fein objected to the vagueness of the formulation on North-South bodies and to the fact that there was no reference to an equality agenda, demilitarisation or political prisoners.
The SDLP looked for support to the administration in Dublin, but this was not forthcoming, because Dublin feared that Sinn Fein would walk out of the talks.
Close observers of the peace process said that yesterday's failure to reach agreement was not a serious setback to the peace process in general. ?????ein president, Mr Gerry Adams, and to what was described as a useful visit by Mr Ahern to the US.
The Taoiseach commented yesterday on the failure to reach agreement. "The line of disagreement is that the unionists are saying that Sinn Fein won't talk about Strand One issues unless policing and demilitarisation are on the agenda, but all these things are going to be part of the discussions anyhow. The heads of agreement, as put together last week, are not going to change."
The Taoiseach was briefing members of the Irish media accompanying him on his US trip on the basis of the most recent reports he had received from the Department of Foreign Affairs on the talks in Belfast, which had not concluded at that stage.
Mr Ahern said that the most "significant" aspect of yesterday's talks was the fact that the Sinn Fein negotiator, Mr Martin McGuinness, had said that his party would discuss a Northern Ireland assembly in Strand One. "That will allow us to move on to Strands Two and Three", he said.
While Mr McGuinness had linked Sinn Fein's agreement to discuss an assembly in Strand One to negotiations on the reform of the RUC and demilitarisation, it had already been decided that these matters would be discussed.
"The unionists would have thought that Martin McGuinness would say `I'm not talking about Strand One issues'. I think McGuinness has been cute . . . he did not say that. He said `I'll talk about Strand One issues with policing and demilitarisation'. I think that's a clever card, frankly, to play on the day that was in it."
The Taoiseach said that the Government had done a lot of work on Strand Two issues dealing with North-South bodies and it was important for nationalists in Northern Ireland that these bodies would be "real, meaningful and not just useful, ad-hoc advisory chat shows".
On the question of changes to Articles Two and Three of the Constitution, he had made it "very clear to Mr Blair the other day" that any changes in these articles would be in the context of changes to the Government of Ireland Act.