NOBODY should hold their breath for a formal pre election restoration of the IRA ceasefire following the Taoiseach's lengthy invocation to "the republican movement".

On the face of it, Mr Bruton met one half of the recent Sinn Fein demands that the two should provide that the forthcoming all party negotiations will be real and meaningful.

As is only to be expected in the present political climate, Mr Gerry Adams immediately set out to use the speech as leverage in his psychological struggle with the British government.

He demanded an unambiguous British response "focused on bringing about change" and he called for "the removal of obstacles and impediments".

He is unlikely to get either, if by "change" he means a pre talks commitment to revising the constitutional status of Northern Ireland, and if by "obstacles" he means the requirement to reinstate the IRA ceasefire.

It could be more productive for Mr Adams, as he probably appreciates, to examine the commitment of the British government, the unionists, the loyalists and the republican movement to the Mitchell report's proposals on decommissioning.

That report urged the parties to consider a compromise "under which some decommissioning would take place during, the process of all party negotiations".

It said: "As progress is made on political issues, even modest mutual steps on decommissioning could help create the atmosphere needed for further steps in a progressive pattern of mounting trust and confidence."

Mitchell clearly did not envisage a resolution of the decommissioning problem at the outset of talks. Moreover, he suggested that an independent commission could supervise the decommissioning process - an idea close to the "separate strand" suggestion of the Tanaiste, Mr Spring.

All parties, including Sinn Fein, are studiously selective in their quotations and interpretations of Mitchell and other definitive documents and speeches.

Mr Adams allowed himself to welcome only "the general tenor" of Mr Bruton's remarks.

There were a dozen or more specific commitments and firm statements of position in the speech which, if put directly to Mr Adams, he could not endorse - either he or his party has previously rejected them.

Mr Bruton clearly hinted at the possibility of working with Sinn Fein, or other parties (even the unionists?) in the talks, on issues where there was "parallelism" between their positions.

But he qualified this by noting that it would be "subject to adhering to the basic principles of consent, non violence and democracy most recently affirmed in the document of the [Dublin] forum's drafting committee".

Everybody knows Sinn Fein refused to endorse the forum's final draft document and therefore has problems accepting the validity of at least some of these "basic principles".

And Mr Bruton plainly set out the Government's intention of basing its position at the all party talks on that same document and on the Framework Document.

The Government would seek "substantial and significant change, on the lines, and in accordance with the principles set out in the Framework Document, in regard to constitutional and political matters".

But, in the Framework Document, both governments accepted that new arrangements "should acknowledge that it would be wrong to make any change in the status of Northern Ireland save with the consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland".

This principle of consent, previously set out in the Downing Street Declaration of December 1993, is patently unacceptable to Sinn Fein and the IRA.

Jesuitically, they accept only that the "agreement" of unionists is essential for any lasting peace settlement.

Yet Mr Adams was able to welcome "the general tenor" of Mr Bruton's speech.

The selective double think here will not have been lost on unionists. Nor will they have missed the extraordinary reference by Mr Bruton - to "the Irish nation that extends beyond this State", and the Government's responsibilities towards "unionists who prefer to express - their Irishness within a British framework".

Those unionists who prefer to express their Britishness within a Northern Irish framework will no doubt feel left out.

Yet Mr Bruton's extensive invocation represented a wholehearted attempt to provide assurances that the Government will be a trenchant advocate of nationalist concerns in the negotiations.

Most of it was based on policy positions already well defined and documented in Government speeches and documents, but the half promise that "an indicative timeframe" for the talks may be sought is a new departure that will please Sinn Fein.

There were some challenging points for unionists, particularly the UUP, to answer, where he quoted from their published position papers.

They certainly have an opportunity to take reasoned issue with him: where he asked them to acknowledge "the fact that nationalist positions now accord full recognition and respect to their British allegiance and identity and to the need for consent and agreement".

Sadly, they may be tempted to take the easy and superficial approach and simply label the whole thing as yet more evidence of Dublin's partisanship and brazen interference in Northern affairs.

The danger in trying to be evenhanded between two acutely polarised positions, as Mr Bruton may, yet find out, is that one can end up, placating neither and providing ammunition for both.