It's five minutes to midnight in the peace process. After a year of trying to be nice to everybody, Tony Blair has at last laid it on the line. Wednesday is the deadline so the parties have to get their act together in the next three days.
The basic principles were set out by the two prime ministers on Friday evening. While some of the local participants were inclined to play down the significance of that statement, official sources felt an important step had been taken. At least this week there would be clarity: here are the principles, now let's see how we implement them.
There was a principle for everybody in the audience. The unionists accepted there should be an executive which included Sinn Fein. The republicans agreed there should be total decommissioning by May 2000. And all parties agreed decommissioning must be "carried out in a manner determined by the Independent Commission on Decommissioning".
None of the parties shifted from its fundamental position, but there was an important reformulation of their views. It was a change of rhetoric, and the task facing everybody this week is to turn that rhetoric into reality.
Sinn Fein correctly pointed out that there was nothing in the three principles which conflicted with the terms of the Good Friday pact. But we are not used to hearing it stated in such stark terms that Sinn Fein, along with the other parties, was committed to the principle of total paramilitary decommissioning within 10 months.
No wonder some elements in the media became very excited when they saw this written in black and white.
Enter Pat Doherty, Sinn Fein vice-president and a key figure who is always around at critical moments. In a statement which has to have been prepared more or less simultaneously with the Blair-Ahern text, he firmly anchored the "Castle Buildings Principles" in the Belfast Agreement.
The three principles put forward by Mr Blair and Mr Ahern - "firmly bedded in the terms of the Good Friday agreement" - could resolve the impasse if there was the political will, Mr Doherty said.
Privately, republicans were adjuring journalists neither to read too much nor too little into what had been announced. Observers felt a definite sense of the republican constituency being stretched, in Gerry Adams's famous phrase, and of a leadership intent on ensuring that the stretch did not reach breaking-point.
Rhetoric is out of fashion these days but it means a lot to republicans. To a movement invented by Wolfe Tone and customised by Padraig Pearse, language matters. Sinn Fein has made a very heavy verbal commitment to decommissioning. The usual conditions and riders remain and if they are not complied with, we may never see guns being destroyed.
But the promise is there, the headline is in type - the rest is negotiations, the full implementation of all aspects of the Good Friday document and the establishment of a stable political process within which the disposal of weapons can be considered as part of an overall programme of demilitarisation and normalisation of public life.
The Ulster Unionists, too, have taken a risk. They have effectively handed the weapons issue over to Gen de Chastelain. The critics would say you should never give anybody a blank cheque, but anybody who knows the general would agree that, if you have to do it, he is the person you can trust and rely upon more than anybody else.
Having been given that blank cheque, the Canadian military man needs to be careful not to write in more noughts than the parties on both sides can live with. He must be careful not to exceed the balance in anyone's account.
Authority and trust are the key to resolving these difficult issues. When Senator Mitchell indicated in his January 1996 report that decommissioning could take place simultaneously with negotiations, it provided enough comfort and assurance for the multi-party talks to proceed in due course. In the event, simultaneous decommissioning did not take place but the senator had never promised that it would. He had only urged the parties to consider such an approach.
Friends of the general say he believes Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness are genuine in their desire to bring the republican movement on to an exclusively democratic and political path and have put their lives on the line to achieve that end.
In other words, while his report will not be able to state that the political leaders of republicanism have procured the decommissioning of weapons, it can say that they are sincere in their pursuit of that aim. The two governments will robustly insist that there is no "second-guessing" the general: he is the chosen vehicle for resolving this problem.
Imponderables remain. Sources close to republican thinking say any attempt to introduce the "Mallon Plan", providing for the expulsion of Sinn Fein from government if there was no decommissioning within a specified period, could scupper the negotiations because as far as republicans are concerned this would be going outside the terms of Good Friday.
The attitude taken by the two governments today will be crucial. Downing Street has consistently refused to accept that Sinn Fein and the IRA are separate entities, and this could cause complications. Sinn Fein has consistently maintained it is not the IRA, has no guns of its own to hand over and cannot give a guarantee on behalf of its paramilitary associates.
"We regard them as two sides of the same coin," a British government insider said.
Meanwhile, the enormous effort by Mr Trimble and Downing Street to resolve the Drumcree dispute continued yesterday. Nobody was quite sure how it fitted into the bigger picture, but everyone agreed a solution would ease tensions all around.
Round-table talks with Sinn Fein being asked to reiterate its commitment to decommissioning in front of a greater number of witnesses seems to be the first item on today's menu. Talk of Sinn Fein and/or IRA statements about an end to the war has been played down or dismissed as "speculation". All parties will keep their cards close to their chest until the final hours.
It may be that another long dark night of the soul is looming for Northern Ireland.