The Democratic Unionist Party has said it will not attend talks hosted in Hillsborough today by the Northern Secretary and the Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern.
Peter Hain and Mr Ahern will hold talks with Sinn Féin and later with the Progressive Unionists led by David Ervine.
However, the DUP has said the talks are unnecessary as the British and Irish governments are fully aware of the party's position.
Speaking yesterday, Nigel Dodds said the governments were inviting the parties to Hillsborough to create an image of work-in-progress leading to a possible restoration of the Stormont institutions.
He accused them of organising the meetings for "the optics".
"What we're about is the real business of meeting with government ministers from Tony Blair and Peter Hain down on a regular basis.
"We were doing it last week, and we'll be doing it next week, and also with the Dublin Government as well, about the real issues of confidence-building, equality and so on."
However, a well-placed political source at Stormont said the talks were not being held just for the sake of being seen to do something.
It was admitted that the next sustained effort to reinstate the Stormont assembly is unlikely unless and until the Independent Monitoring Commission has issued its next report, expected in January, which confirms that the IRA has ended all activities.
However, the source said this did not mean that today's talks were a mere stock-taking exercise.
Mr Ahern arrives later this morning for the talks co-hosted with Mr Hain, who leaves for a series of engagements in New York and Washington later this week.
The meeting with the PUP could indicate the governments' response to the ending of the loyalist feud between the Loyalist Volunteer Force (LVF) and the UVF, which is aligned to the PUP. The party had been sanctioned by the British government over the feud.
The LVF instructed its units to stand down shortly after it was announced on October 31st that the feud had ended.