WHAT happens if - or, as seems more likely, when - the Stormont multi-party talks collapse? Specifically, how long will Mr Tony Blair be prepared to give the parties before concluding that a comprehensive agreement is beyond them?
Will the British Prime Minister retain the conviction that his famous mandate empowers him to drive the engine for change? Or will that sense of opportunity occasioned by his Belfast speech be lost in another protracted rehearsal of the ancient animosities?
Even as Dr Mo Mowlam works flat out to breathe new life into the process, there are strong indications of contingency planning in London for a breakdown. And key political sources last night confirmed their belief that Mr Blair could wind the process up by the autumn, if he concludes that an agreement will not be forthcoming.
"Strike while the iron is hot" is a sound injunction for any new minister. And Dr Mowlam clearly has the sense that she has caught Mr David Trimble in something of a bind. The Ulster Unionist leader challenges the two governments, and the SDLP, to make progress in the talks without Sinn Fein.
Dr Mowlam is able to counter that Dublin and the SDLP see their road blocked (conveniently or otherwise) by the unionist preoccupation with the decommissioning issue. Hence her determination that a compromise must be found along the lines of the recommendation of the Mitchell Report.
At the same time, the Northern Secretary can urge the SDLP that a willingness to proceed without waiting for Sinn Fein may prove, in the long run, the best hope that the process will ultimately become "inclusive".
Last Friday Mr Trimble signalled his willingness to side-step this thorny obstacle. However, we should not get too carried away by any "compromise" suddenly entered into. For the unionists are unlikely to shrug off what Mr Ken Maginnis terms "the psychology of decommissioning". His leader appears willing to leave the issue aside, but only on the assumption that the IRA is unlikely to restore a ceasefire on terms which will secure Sinn Fein's entry into talks.
If, against that expectation, the UUP suddenly finds itself confronting Mr Gerry Adams and Mr Marlin McGuinness they will have plenty to say on the subject. And Mr Trimble is unlikely to commit himself to any agreed London/Dublin position, for he suspects that any such agreement, by definition, will not reflect his interpretation of the Mitchell plan.
In crude terms, there are two views of Mitchell. The general nationalist inclination is to see his proposal for some decommissioning not before or after, but during, the process of negotiation as a means of kicking the entire subject into the long grass. The underlying conviction is that decommissioning simply isn't going to happen.
The alternative view, as enunciated by Dr Mowlam, and to which Mr Trimble clings religiously, is that the proposal for "parallel" decommissioning means precisely that. And if for pragmatic reasons, the UUP is willing to defer the issue, we should assume that the questions of "timetabling" and "bench-marking" would quickly resurrect themselves should Sinn Fein join the talks.
Even if this assessment is unduly pessimistic, are we really to expect Mr Trimble and Mr Adams to hammer out an agreement along the lines of the Joint Framework Documents?
"Never say never" is another useful injunction, to journalist and politician alike. But unionist politicians are often happy to exempt themselves from this cardinal rule. Mr Trimble has set his face against the frameworks. Indeed, by the end of the last parliament, he and his colleagues appeared convinced that the Framework Documents were effectively off the table.
That was probably a great miscalculation. The frameworks (rather like the IRA) never really went away. True, British ministers and officials maintained they were never offered as a "blueprint". But they were represented as the shared understanding of London and Dublin as to the parameters of an agreement likely to command widespread acceptance and support. There is no evidence that Dr Mowlam resiles from that view, and much to the contrary.
The question now exercising key players is how to get there, or to something broadly similar, in scope and intention.
Without doubt, the preferred route is by agreement through the talks process. However, few of the participants (whether from Dublin, the UUP, the SDLP, DUP or Alliance) offer any real hope. And while seeking to push the process forward, neither Dr Mowlam nor Mr Blair is blind to this prognosis. The insistent word, however, is that they are equally determined not to preside over another missed opportunity.
THE Prime Minister, in particular, is said to be committed to securing a breakthrough. His Belfast speech was actually in the making before the election. Some who have had direct dealings with him suggest he came to power with a fairly clear idea of what he wanted to achieve.
In this context, if an alternative to the talks process has to be found, his proposals for Scottish and Welsh devolution assume added significance. Mr Blair and Dr Mowlam have already placed the opportunities for the North in the context of Labour's plans for "institutional change" in Britain.
Dublin dislikes such cross-reference, and fears this could be code for a purely devolutionist approach. But Dr Mowlam knows too much about the problem to imagine a purely -"internal" solution would work. In Labour's devolution plans a European dimension which could itself prove a powerful pressure on unionists to drop their "integrationist" stance.
Would unionists continue their flight from power and responsibility, for example, while members of a Scottish parliament or a Welsh assembly negotiated on their own behalf with Brussels?
As they looked to Europe and its "widening" context, so Labour would look to the North-South relationship within the wider Anglo-Irish framework. This, as ever, could prove the hard part. There is the perennial question of Articles 2 and 3 (which Mr Blair chided could helpfully be tackled in advance of a settlement). There is also the tension between the symbolic importance of the North-South link to Dublin, and the reality that the London-Dublin partnership by definition will remain paramount.
The temptation is to conclude that unionism will never sanction any meaningful cross-Border linkage. However, some players detect potential in Mr Trimble's apparent understanding with the previous Conservative government that Strands 2 and 3 (those covering North-South and East-West) should be addressed together.
Others share the UUP leader's view that there is untapped potential in the Anglo-Irish Inter-Governmental Council initiated by Mr Haughey and Mrs Thatcher as a forerunner to the 1985 Hillsborough Agreement. The acid test for Dublin and Northern nationalists would be how far short of the frameworks such a combination might fall.
But this is some way off. And there are many devils in the detail, not least how to effect an agreement which does not spring directly from a round-table process involving the parties themselves.
The parties, moreover, may prove the cynics and the pessimists wrong. But they may find it salutary to reflect that Britain's new Labour government has an agenda for the rest of the UK which challenges the North to move forward, and fosters the hope it may prove unable to stand still.
