WlTHIN the past 10 days the political spotlight has had a kaleidoscopic effect as it darted backwards and forwards - now focused on the British government, now on the UUP, briefly on an unexpected ad hoc alliance of the SDLP and DUP, occasionally on the Irish Government.
Now, it has switched from a doubtless relieved British government to Sinn Fein and the IRA.
Britain had to pay for its earlier error in dragging out the peace process, presumably to give the unionists more time to prepare for their eventual unpalatable confrontation with Sinn Fein in all-party talks.
That John Major and his colleagues were concerned about unionist sensitivities was understandable, indeed proper.
But this concern should never have been allowed to distort so dangerously their judgment on how long Sinn Fein could prevent an IRA return to violence.
This mishandling of the peace process must have helped hardliners within the IRA, only half convinced in the first instance that it would lead anywhere, to sell the position that violence alone pays.
No doubt the Taoiseach and the Prime Minister are correct in asserting that agreement was at hand when the bombs went off and that the renewed violence slowed Wednesday's summit and communique.
But that is certainly not the way this outcome will have been viewed within the ranks of the IRA.
This must have made it more difficult for Sinn Fein to persuade the IRA to recommit itself to the peace process and to accept the Mitchell principles and a decommissioning of arms to take place simultaneously with the forthcoming all-party talks.
But whatever the mistakes made by the British in the past 18 months, it cannot be denied that when it came to the crunch John Major showed his mettle.
He put peace in Northern Ireland before what must have been an agonising concern for his government's survival.
At such a critical moment in the life of the Conservative government its survival would have been seriously prejudiced by the loss of Monday's Commons vote.
Moreover, that vote was so close and its outcome so unpredictable that John Major could have had no illusions on Monday about being safe without at least the abstention of the UUP.
That is where the UUP made a major tactical mistake, curiously enough because it seems to have shared IRA cynicism about John, Major's motivation.
From the moment of his election as UUP leader David Trimble in tactical terms played his cards with great skill - up to this last fence. But there the UUP leader came unstuck.
WHATEVER criticisms one may make of John Major's earlier handling of matters, in the last resort the peace process is more important to him than domestic political advantage - a point the IRA could usefully take on board.
In the event, parliamentary reactions, to the summit and communique were remarkably positive on both sides of the Irish Sea.
In the Dail, opposition leader Bertie Ahern maintained the statesmanlike stance he has adopted throughout the recent difficult months.
He welcomed the breakthroughs and asked the IRA to give a full and unequivocal commitment that would restore the integrity of the peace process without reservations.
In the Commons, unionist spokesmen may not have been enthusiastic and then and since have" expressed reservations.
But they were careful not to, turn down the joint Anglo-Irish scheme to initiate all-party talks on June 10th. And for the SDLP, deputy leader Seamus Mallon was refreshing and impressive.
With characteristic directness he described this as "the moment of truth" for all the paramilitaries who, he said, "now have to choose between peace or isolation".
It seemed for 24 hours as if this joint Anglo-Irish approach, offering all-party talks on June 10th without preconditions, had finally swept away all the ambiguities of the past 18 months.
These ambiguities, however distasteful to democrats who reject violence as a political weapon, had to be - and were generally - accepted as inevitable during the preliminary stage off a peace process.
At last it seemed that a straight choice was being jointly presented to the IRA by all democratic forces in these islands: cease violence and join the process or we shall go ahead without you.
And that was what I wrote when preparing my first draft of this article on Thursday afternoon.
Unhappily, this clear-cut choice has since been confused by John Hume's call, after meeting the IRA with Gerry Adams, for a ministerial meeting in the absence of a ceasefire - not just with Sinn Fein but with the IRA itself.
I find this stance unacceptable, supportive as I have been of the SDLP leader during this process and throughout his entire career.
It cuts across Government and opposition policy and conflicts with his own party's principled stance on this issue as enunciated by Seamus Mallon in the House of Commons last Wednesday.
A PROPOSAL for ministerial talks with the IRA, or even with Sinn Fein in the absence of a renewed ceasefire, could dangerously divide the forces of democratic Irish nationalism, recently united in the cause of peace.
If pursued, this plan could threaten for the first time in many years to drive a wedge between nationalists North and South.
Worst of all, it could encourage the IRA to ignore the demand of the Irish people that it call off its terrorist campaign.
I can understand John Hume's, concern to complete the task he so, courageously and unselfishly set himself many years ago, to end the violence and bring all protagonists around a table to hammer out an agreed future for Ireland.
Perhaps by becoming so absorbed in a process largely of his making, he may momentarily have lost sight of the principle upon which Irish democracy has been soundly and painstakingly built over many difficult decades: that democratically elected governments meet politically only people who respect the democratic mandate and who eschew, violence.
One should not, perhaps, make too much of this issue, which has made little public impact.
But it would have been wrong to have ignored it when writing about the peace process at this moment.
Even if at the end of the day the IRA is persuaded to end its campaign and to accept, along with Sinn Fein, the Mitchell principles and the principle of arms decommissioning in parallel with the forthcoming negotiations, the path ahead will remain difficult. The Tanaiste in the Oireachtas on Thursday showed he was alert to the dangers ahead.
He stressed there the need for all parties at the outset to make clear their absolute commitment to the principles of democracy and non-violence set out in the Mitchell report.
But he added that while all parties must address the Mitchell decommissioning proposals "this does not mean and cannot be interpreted as meaning that serious negotiation on all other issues must wait until the decommissioning issue is definitively settled".
Already, however, the unionist parties show signs of contesting this approach.
The negotiations starting on June 10th look like being long and difficult.