President Clinton is not going to get into a "negotiating session" with David Trimble and Gerry Adams over the decommissioning impasse. He will "not be brokering a deal".
This was stated very firmly by the senior official who has been briefing the President on the crisis in the run-up to the mass migration of Northern Ireland political leaders to Washington for St Patrick's Day.
The President sees his role as putting the impasse between Sinn Fein and the UUP over the setting up the executive and decommissioning into a broader context, so he will not be thumping the table and citing articles and sub-sections from the Belfast Agreement.
Just like last year when the possibility of an agreement seemed remote and David Trimble and Gerry Adams were not even talking to each other, President Clinton will be at his most persuasive to encourage the parties to find the necessary compromise. But "we will not be putting forward a compromise", the official said.
There will be a public and a private message from President Clinton to the assembled politicians. Last year the public message at the shamrock ceremony at the White House was: "This is the chance of a lifetime for peace in Northern Ireland. Don't miss it."
This year as the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, hands over the bowl of shamrock, the public message is going to be pretty much the same. This impasse need not result in winners and losers. This can be a "win-win" situation if all the parties concerned focus on the overall goals of the agreement instead of getting bogged down on what is only one, albeit an important, aspect.
What will go on privately in the Oval Office as the Northern Ireland leaders troop in and out between the shamrock ceremony, the speaker's lunch on Capitol Hill and the White House reception in the evening remains to be seen.
Last year the President promised the "biggest party ever" if the politicians who crowded into the East Room of the White House could reach an agreement. This year, with the numbers of Irish-Americans and visitors from Northern Ireland up by 50 per cent to about 1,000, the party has to move to a tent on the South Lawn to accommodate the numbers.
As the President will make his plea in the crowded tent for the rescuing of the agreement by the Holy Week deadline, the protagonists will surely feel the huge pressures not to wreck what has been accomplished. By this time also, they will have had their private sessions with the President and his advisers and will have been reminded that if, as the Taoiseach and the NI Secretary of State, Mo Mowlam say, "There is no plan B", then, as the Americans say, "Failure is not an option".
In the lead-up to St Patrick's Day, Sinn Fein and the UUP are both seeking the high moral ground with American public opinion. Sinn Fein has spent thousands of dollars placing an advertisement on the influential opinion page of the New York Times accusing David Trimble of "threatening to crash" the peace agreement over decommissioning. About a dozen senior Sinn Fein members are fanning out over the US carrying the same message.
John Taylor, the UUP deputy leader, has riposted in an article in the Washington Post quoting from the Taoiseach's interview with the Sunday Times to claim that Sinn Fein's position on decommissioning has "isolated" it even from nationalist opinion in Ireland.
ALL THIS is seen as the preliminary skirmishing to a round of intensive meetings in Washington next week. The two governments will be represented as well as the Northern Ireland parties so all the prerequisites for solving the decommissioning impasse on US soil are there if the will is there.
Congressman Peter King, who has close contacts with Sinn Fein and the White House, says that while there was no apparent meeting of minds last year in Washington, within weeks the Belfast Agreement had been signed. He believes that the meetings in Washington between President Clinton and the political leaders "went a long way to make the Good Friday agreement possible".
This year, the meetings could also lead to a later agreement back home, he says optimistically. Mr King does not expect any "magic proposals" coming from the President but he is "definitely going to be engaged." His role will be to find common ground and move the opposing parties forward, "but I don't know if he can do that".
The President will take advantage of the celebrations to award Senator George Mitchell the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honour, for his role in the peace process. As Gerry Adams and David Trimble watch the President honour the man who, according to the citation, has "helped bring the people of Northern Ireland closer to peace than they have been in 30 years of sectarian conflict", they will realise how much is at stake coming up to the next Good Friday.