SECRETARY of State Julian Smith is expected to meet Tánaiste Simon Coveney in Belfast today ahead of talks with Stormont's main parties later in the week.
Sources at the Northern Ireland Office were last night playing down reports of reconvened round-table negotiations on Thursday and Friday, insisting the secretary of state would be meeting parties' delegations individually.
Mr Smith met Sinn Féin leader Mary Lou McDonald on Sunday and DUP leader Arlene Foster yesterday.
He was yesterday reported to have warned the parties that if they wished to block the imposition of Westminster abortion legislation, they would need to strike a deal to restore the institutions by Monday of next week.
MPs voted earlier this year to liberalise Northern Ireland's abortion laws if Stormont is not restored by October 21.
Talks aimed at restoring the institutions, which has been dormant for 1,000 days, were reconvened in April following the murder of Lyra McKee in Derry.
However, there has been little progress and the negotiations effectively petered out over the summer.
Sinn Féin deputy leader Michelle O’Neill said her party recognised that it was "unsustainable to have no executive delivering public services and providing political leadership".
She claimed the DUP "walked away from talks" last year and that the party and the British government "continued to resist advancing equality and human rights guarantees".
"The toxic DUP/Tory pact continues to impede political progress and social reform, and has eroded all pretence of the rigorous impartiality required of the British government as co-guarantors of the Good Friday Agreement," she said.
"The British government’s proposal of a unionist veto in the Brexit context is totally unacceptable and makes political progress even more difficult."
SDLP leader Colum Eastwood called on all parties to agree, in principle, to the reform of the petition of concern in principle as a way to restore power sharing.
"It’s time to change the record – we cannot continue in our trenches, hurling insults and demands at each other while no one is prepared to come out and meet in the middle," he said.
"The SDLP has made bold proposals for a fair reform of the petition of concern that, we believe, all parties can back that would allow the restoration of government in the short term."
