Sinn Féin MP Martin McGuinness, taking two days off from his re-election campaign to visit the US, had a 45-minute meeting with the Bush administration's envoy to Northern Ireland, Mitchell Reiss, in Washington yesterday. Mr Reiss described it as a "good meeting" and a "business-like session", held at Mr McGuinness's request.
They discussed "Gerry Adams's statement to the IRA, the timing and the content of a response by the IRA, the upcoming elections, and how the peace process can be put on course," Mr Reiss said in a telephone interview.
Asked if he was optimistic about the IRA response to the Sinn Féin leader's speech calling for it to adopt only democratic and political methods, Mr Reiss said, "I wanted to hear from Martin how he saw things developing in the weeks and months ahead and I have no reason to be less or more optimistic."
Today in New York Mr McGuinness will be a guest of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy at a lunch hosted by William Flynn, George Schwab and Thomas Moran to mark the "historic initiative taken by Sinn Féin".
The fact that Mr McGuinness took time off from his campaign for re-election as Mid-Ulster MP was seen in the US as underlining the importance to Sinn Féin of having continued working relations with Irish-American legislators and the US government during the election campaign pending a response from the IRA.