THE situation is depressingly messy and confused. The two governments are chasing their own tails and the tails are, all too clearly, wagging the dogs of war. After Canary Wharf the dogs are barking again and the sound has not changed.

We want, say the IRA in An Phoblacht, negotiations with all parties in Ireland. What is left unspoken but implied is that, if we don't get our demands in full, we will carry on with the killing.

Which underlines the fact that the IRA have not, in any way, altered their position since 1932 when their then spokesman, Eamon de Valera, said to Lloyd George "The principle for which we are fighting is the principle of Ireland's right to complete self determination

In other words they still adamantly refuse to accept the key principle of the Downing Street Declaration of December 1995, a principle endorsed by both the British and Irish governments.

In the words of John Major "The British government reaffirms that they will uphold the democratic wish of the greater number of the people of Northern Ireland on the issue of whether they prefer to support the Union

That principle goes to the heart of the conflict. As was recognised by that clear sighted and honest statesman, Kevin O'Higgins, when in the Dail they were hammering out the Irish Constitution which was to embody the provisions of the newly signed Treaty.

O'Higgins declared bluntly and there has never been a greater need for plain blunt speaking than now "There is no constitutional hybrid between a republic and a monarchy. Mr de Valera had thought he had begotten one, but nobody loved it and he abandoned it himself".

That was a reference to de Valera's abortive scheme for an external association through the Commonwealth.

Michael Collins and O'Higgins before they were both killed by the IRA, despite their recognition of the bitter reality that there was no such hybrid, bent all their efforts in a vain search for one, resulting only in O'Higgins's impossible dream of a dual monarchy.

Only the IRA and the shrinking minority who support them still harbour the illusion that wading through Irish and English blood "can make a right Rose Tree".

We are grappling once again with that blood stained illusion. Forget about the hybrid. What all seek now is a modus vivendi. For we face not a problem which has a solution but a conflict which in the existing context can only, for the foreseeable future, be stilled. That can only happen through the democratic process of discussion and agreement.

But such negotiation must be governed by certain indispensable rules. Democratic parties cannot have "talks" with parties whose negotiating strength consists, not in the numbers of those they represent, but in several tons of Semtex backed up by the threat to bomb their way into acceptance of their demands.

So of course there must be a precondition to any talks. The essential precondition that such a threat cannot possibly be implemented. How can that be achieved? Without decommissioning of Semtex, there will need to be a clear and internationally accepted commitment of such a nature as to make its breach unthinkable in the view of all the governments concerned.

Such a commitment is all the more necessary since the Canary Wharf bombing. The widespread attempts to blame John Major and his election proposals have been exposed for the sham they are by the intelligence that the bomb was transported from Co Louth via Stranraer four weeks before the outrage. The decision had already been taken weeks before.

Sources have revealed that Gerry Adams was bypassed and overruled by elements in the IRA who never favoured a ceasefire. But he and those who may think like him will, nevertheless, at all costs do everything to avoid the capital sin of a split in the "republican movement". It must be brought "intact" into the process.

The other day I talked to Gusty Spence, the reformed gunman and spokesman for the Progressive Unionist Party and privy to loyalist paramilitary thinking. He has striven long and hard to reach out to the nationalist family, even attempting to learn Gaelic in the Maze.

He said "If the IRA have hung Sinn Fein out to dry what do you think they would do with us if they had the chance?" But his lot feel that unionists should ease as much as possible Adams's path into talks.

"If there is then only one dissenting voice among all the democratic parties throughout the whole of Ireland, given the universal desire for peace and agreement, then that voice would be exposed and isolated for what it is," he says. The loyalist ceasefire will hold, for the moment, he assures us.

Unionists wish to press on with an elected convention. President Clinton is in favour of it. Though angered by the ending of the ceasefire he will still talk to Gerry Adams whom he sees as the only practical channel through which to exert his influence on the IRA.

DAVID Trimble and John Taylor saw John Bruton last September and "spelt out to him" that the elected body would serve only to open the talks door and would not be employed to establish an "old regime" internal solution. They might have saved their breath.

Unionists see the "proximity talks" as impractical and point out that any get togethers would have to be pro rata to party strengths that they could not accept joint supervision by Dick Spring along with Patrick Mayhew, and that in the Dayton Bosnian exercise the political representatives of paramilitaries were excluded, a decision to which the Irish Government was party. However, they do not dismiss the whole idea out of hand.

The election must be held ceasefire or no. No preconditions. None can be excluded. Ninety members to give all relevant bodies a chance of representation.

Unionists see the first plenary session of the convention as dealing with the following commitment to the six principles of the Mitchell report an acceptance of the principle of consent as per the Downing Street Declaration and phased decommissioning as recommended by Mitchell.

Since both Dublin and the SDLP warmly endorsed the Mitchell report, John Taylor feels that there should therefore be ready agreement on its fundamentals before establishing the separate negotiating committees which would deal with the various strands of dissent.

But already one hears howls of "More preconditions" echoing round the Stormont hill. John Hume's idea of a referendum one, do you want peace? Two, do you want talks to achieve it? Why not three are you in favour of motherhood and apple pie? The results of such a poll would be ludicrously predictable.

Despite the ultimatums from both Bruton and Major that they will not talk to Adams until the ceasefire is reinstated, behind the scenes scurrying is directed at making him once again salon fahig, as the Germans say presentable in political drawing rooms.

The Taoiseach is now in a "Catch 1922" situation like Collins and de Valera does form an electoral pact with the outlaw, as the SDLP would like to do with Sinn Fein, or does he keep the party squeaky clean?

In, the flurry of assembling the parties, the real possibility of a showdown has been studiously ignored. If the principle of consent is accepted there will emerge no green print, or anything resembling one, for a united Ireland. So, if the IRA persists in its ossified mind set, there will be hard decisions facing the two governments.

Have they the bottle to take them?

Should it come to that, they must be compelled by the demonstrably massive determination of the people of both traditions throughout this island of Ireland, to make an end of bloodshed once and for all.