Mr David Trimble will try to recover his position this morning and return pressure on Sinn Fein over decommissioning, with a stipulation of his terms for the transfer of power to the proposed Northern Ireland executive.
The Ulster Unionist leader is due to meet his Assembly colleagues at Stormont, after a week of fierce internal criticism and speculation about his leadership following the party's effective rejection of the agreement thought to have been brokered in Downing Street last Friday night.
However, Mr Trimble's bid to rally his party seems certain to cast fresh doubt on hopes for an early resolution of the decommissioning impasse. And amid an escalating war of words between the parties, the Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, warned that if powers were not devolved by July 1st, the Belfast Agreement could collapse.
After their second round of talks with the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, at No 10 yesterday, senior SDLP sources appeared confident that the d'Hondt procedure for the nomination of ministers-designate would be triggered next week. That assessment was subsequently shifted in line with a British projection that this development now appeared more likely in the first week of June.
However, senior UUP sources insisted it would only happen if "the theology" of the abortive preEaster Hillsborough Declaration was reinstated and accepted by all sides.
Specifically, the sources said, this meant Sinn Fein acceptance that IRA decommissioning was "an obligation" under the terms of the Belfast Agreement; that "progress" to be reported by the International Decommissioning Commission would be defined to provide for "actuality"; and that - as at Hillsborough, but contrary to last Friday's text - the determination on whether or not to proceed to devolution would be by fulfilling set criteria, not the sole decision of any one party.
The sources said they expected Mr Trimble to put this package to the Assembly party this morning. But they said their leader "had no answer" to whether there was any realistic chance of it proving acceptable to Sinn Fein or the SDLP.
Mr Trimble last night gave his account of proceedings in Downing Street last Friday, following Mr Adams's claim of "a solemn undertaking from Mr Blair that . . . if there is not a transfer of power by 30 June the Good Friday agreement process is finished".
SDLP sources immediately confirmed Mr Adams's assertion, saying the undertaking had been "volunteered on a piece of paper". Translated in some media reports as a threat by Mr Blair to suspend the Stormont Assembly, this was immediately taken as further evidence that Mr Trimble had been isolated and under pressure during the 10-hour negotiation.
While suggesting that the use of the word "undertaking" was wrong, Mr Trimble last night confirmed that this threat to "the processes of the entire agreement" had featured in a first British draft of the subsequently disputed text. However, he claimed that the draft was later softened and amended at the insistence of the Irish Government and the SDLP, and that he had "objected" to the change in the original draft which "would have put pressure on all sides." Specifically, Mr Trimble said, the threat to bring all the processes of the Belfast Agreement to an end would have included ending the programme of prisoner releases.
Meanwhile, authoritative sources dismissed as "completely untrue" reports circulating yesterday that the Patten Commission on the future of policing in the North had been asked to bring forward its report to the end of June.