Is policing the issue which might yet derail the Belfast Agreement? Until now the argument over decommissioning alone has appeared to contain that full destructive potential. However, disparate events over the summer months - the SDLP-led furore over the Patten reforms, and the UVF/UFF feud - have contrived to underline the still-perilous nature of David Trimble's position, and the fragility of the entire Good Friday agreement.
Loyalist warfare will certainly have revived mainstream unionist anxieties about the morality of peace-making, and the agreement to sanction the programme ofprisoner releases without securing practical affirmation of the sworn commitment to exclusively democratic and peaceful methods.
Confirmation by political spokesmen that the two sides are engaged in a battle for continuing ascendancy will prompt already-sceptical unionists to ask why, and to what end? Mr Trimble, after all, has repeatedly told the IRA the ultimate logic of the republican commitment to democracy is disbandment.
In advance of his return from holiday, the Ulster Unionist leader was touted as a possible mediator in the search for an end to the internecine struggle which has revisited fear and terror upon large swathes of the loyalist population. The very suggestion has occasioned surprise in wider political circles, where the assumption is that he might be wise to maintain his distance.
The imperatives of the peace process, however, suggest he may have little choice - the rationale offered being that his acceptability as go-between derives from the fact that the feuding factions in both organisations still profess support for his political project.
One interesting aspect of much media coverage of this feud has been the general unwillingness to allow that it may, in part at least, reflect increasing division - certainly within the UDA/UFF - over the agreement itself. That said, there is no doubt that its continued escalation could impinge dramatically, and dangerously, on Mr Trimble's already tenuous grip on unionism.
If he does assume a peace-making role, however, such clout as he might command may derive more from the force of internal unionist argument and necessity than from his authority as First Minister. For whatever the feud says about the internal state of loyalist opinion about the agreement, or anything else, it has laid bare the limits of devolution, at least as it currently applies to Northern Ireland.
The late Brian Faulkner famously resigned rather than see Stormont stripped of its responsibility for policing, deciding that a parliament unable to protect its citizen was unworthy of the name. Plainly here we are not comparing like with like. However, the First Minister and the Deputy First Minister, like their Executive and Assembly colleagues, have aspirations to constitute something rather more grand than an upper tier of local government.
Yet when it comes to the question of Johnny Adair's return to prison, and murder and attempted murder accompanied by wholesale intimidation of families and communities, the First Minister's role is confined largely to exhortation.
From his initial comments - likening Mr Adair's return to jail to internment without trial - it is unclear whether the First Minister thinks Peter Mandelson guilty of a misjudgment. However, Mr Trimble's demand for "firm and decisive action" from the British government and the RUC provides stark confirmation that while in the community's mind local ministers might now be assumed to share responsibility for the state of disorder on their streets, they are without power.
For all that Mr Mandelson expected to find himself underemployed in the advent of devolution, the power in these matters continues to rest with the British Secretary of State.
For that reason - and conscious of the risk to the politician seen to bear responsibility without power - one informed Conservative yesterday suggested Mr Trimble would be well advised to maintain his distance.
The advice was well intentioned - the Conservative in question is a supporter of Mr Trimble if not an uncritical admirer of the peace process in all its manifestations. But however receptive Mr Trimble might be to such advice, the ministers with power of decision - Mr Mandelson and, ultimately, Mr Blair - will not be heeding Conservative suggestions that the loyalist feud should now see key reforms of the RUC put on ice.
The Conservative critique of Patten is easily understood, and doubtless instinctively shared by many of Mr Trimble's supporters. There is genuine fear about the implications for policing of the proposed functions of the policing and local police partnership boards; the power of unaccountable representatives to hold the Chief Constable to account and to use powers to order inquiries, perhaps as a pretext for a continuing inquisition into the past rather than laying the basis for the new beginning promised by Patten commission.
Some sources close to the Patten commission understand these and other fears well enough. Yet their continued astonishment is at a unionist/Conservative disposition to urge a go-slow approach to reform rather than embracing what they consider the real prize offered by Patten.
For in all the debate about the commission's recommendations - dominated by continuing disputes, largely now about symbolic matters - it appears forgotten that Patten was predicated on the successful formation of the power-sharing Executive, and the view that substantial policing powers should be devolved to Belfast as quickly as possible.
In the current context, the very notion may seem laughable. Irreconcilable opponents of the Belfast Agreement certainly would have no difficulty explaining the near-impossibility of Unionists, the SDLP and Sinn Fein sharing responsibility for decision-making on policing matters. Even those who embrace the principle will argue - admittedly with a good deal of force and reason - that Northern Ireland's fledgling democracy needs time to gain much greater maturity before being saddled with such potentially divisive responsibilities.
Moreover, many observers are agreed that, should the SDLP ultimately refuse to endorse the new Police Service of Northern Ireland and take its seats on the Policing Board, Mr Trimble's position would become untenable - and the question thus entirely academic.
For all the argument over the Police Bill still to come, however, the comforting conviction in government circles is that this is not the end resultSeamus Mallon intends.
The deputy leader of the SDLP has said the willingness of communities to assume responsibility for policing will be confirmation that grown-up politics have finally arrived in Northern Ireland. Mr Trimble seems to assume it will happen in due course. Both men might also calculate that decisions made by a properly and fully responsible government in Northern Ireland might be the surest way to carry the challenge to former paramilitaries who want to have the benefits of the peace process while remaining somehow above and beyond the law.
Mr Trimble and Mr Mallon will know that, until that day comes, the power of decision over these fundamental issues - touching the elementary right of the citizen to live in peace and security, and going to the principles at the very core of the democracy over which they would preside - will remain the responsibility of British ministers. They will also know that failure to follow through the logic of devolution risks sustaining the politics of opposition fostered by 30 years of direct rule, which the Good Friday accord promised to end.
