NEXT Friday Belfast will don its finery for the opening of its magnificent new £32 million glass, steel and concrete pleasure dome. Amid the glitter and razzamatazz of live television coverage and celebrity appearances, however, the streets around the Waterfront Hall - a state of the art international concert and conference venue - will be dotted with checkpoints and heavily patrolled by RUC and British army units on high alert.
The subsequent month long star studded opening festival will be overshadowed by the fear that it will become another major security headache - that the splendid new hall will be an irresistible target if the IRA's stuttering campaign moves into top gear.
Belfast, in this first week of the year, has been living in a sort of suspended animation, not knowing what way things are going to go. The sales have slumped, the traffic is subdued, the streets are quiet at night and taxi drivers - the sharpest arbiters of a city's life flow - complain of the doldrums.
"It's like a city under sentence of death," one security doorman observed. Since Monday's daylight rocket attack on the High Courts, only a hundred yards from the new Waterfront Hall, the city has indeed suffered a bad case of the jitters.
On Tuesday, hotels, bars, offices and restaurants in the centre were evacuated on foot of bomb alerts. A shopper from the Republic had a sparkling new car demolished in a controlled explosion near the Argos store.
Unwilling to risk more traffic paralysis and the uncertainty about further paramilitary attacks, middle class shoppers are avoiding the city centre. There is, as the taxi drivers quickly perceive, no trace of a buzz about just a mixture of apathy and fatalism.
The commercial sector is caught up in and deeply concerned about the uneasy interregnum and what may follow. "Plans have to be made and implemented, nonetheless, and at Dublin's Holiday World Experience in 10 days time, some 40 Northern tourism exhibitors will be trying to recapture the substantial Southern business lost since the ending of the IRA ceasefire.
With the IRA keeping its' intentions unclear and its options open, the British government, too, is facing a dilemma. In the Northern Ireland Office at Stormont, plans for a new series of official television advertisements have had to be put on hold.
Officials are unsure what line the advertisements should take. If the IRA is to step up its campaign to the ferocity of the pre ceasefire bombing blitz, the ads could appeal for public assistance to overcome the futility of violence, and so on. But if the IRA campaign is to be more limited, intermittent and focused, a more subtle government line might be indicated.
Meanwhile, jumpy British foot patrols appear and disappear in side streets. The eye in the sky helicopters keep vigil. The RUC men cluster in bigger numbers in Royal Avenue and they carry carbines and submachine guns.
Everything adds to the sense that Belfast is holding its breath. The dread is heightened by fears that a return to a full scale war could be more bloody than anything that has gone before.
Monica McWilliams of the Northern Ireland Women's Coalition says people are "just sick to the stomach". Parents who allowed their teenage children to walk home in better times now bundle them into cars or buses to get them safely home.
"The despair is so terrible now because we've tasted peace. We've known what it was like to allow kids out at night without worrying about them."
The climate of fear has been building since hopes died of a renewal of the IRA ceasefire in November. "It's an uneasy situation. Because we're not back to full scale warfare but on the other hand we're on the brink and it does depend on the loyalists' next move."
THE business barometer reflects the uncertainty, with fewer shoppers on the streets. Former lord mayor and UUP councillor Reg Empey said this week's lull in shopping was a typical reaction to the disruption.
"It's the way any civilised society is jeopardised. If people see a threat in the city centre they start going to the out of town centres to shop."
Mr Empey believes the benefits of the ceasefire to retailers were exaggerated, though the city centre did feel better. Business from the Republic had fallen back anyway, he says, because of new stores opening in Dublin.
He dismisses talk of a phoney war. "The reality is that sooner or later one of these bombs is going to go off and there will be fatalities. That's at the top of people's minds."
John Toner, manager of the Europa Hotel, is looking on the positive side. Bookings are low at this time of the year anyway, with most guests being business travellers. There have been no cancellations this week, he says, despite having the hotel evacuated on Tuesday after a bomb scare.
The tabloid press dubbed it the world's most bombed hotel, but the Europa shook off the name during the ceasefires, hosting President Bill Clinton in December 1995.
Mr Toner says the fall in business from the Republic dates back to February when the IRA bombed Canary Wharf. Then business from "down South" accounted for about 22 per cent. "Now it's around 7 per cent."
Yesterday morning one man commented that Friday was usually "bomb day". in Belfast." True to form, the city seized up last night with bomb scares closing off most of the centre. Another day, another disruption.
The limbo continues ...
