The clear blue skies over the peace process this time last year are becoming obscured by dark clouds. The euphoria and hope that a bright day was dawning have given way to concern and fear that it is all slipping away.
Politics abhors a vacuum and the continuing failure, almost a year on, to set up the political institutions agreed on Good Friday has led to a decline in confidence in such diverse quarters as the unionist community in Northern Ireland, public opinion south of the Border, and the ranks of the republican movement.
Difficult as it was to get the agreement on paper, there were still those who said at the time, "This is the easy part." Translating the blueprint into living, breathing institutions has proved a daunting task.
While David Trimble scored a famous victory by persuading Roy Beggs jnr to support him in the crucial Assembly vote over new structures on February 16th, the UUP leader is not out of the woods yet. Opinion poll results show only a 41 per cent minority of unionists are prepared to say they would support the agreement in a second referendum - and this even before republicans get their hands on the levers of government. There won't be a second referendum, of course, but there will be a vote in the European elections on June 10th. The Rev Ian Paisley is already running hard and threatening to give the Ulster Unionists the thrashing of their lives. Dissidents within the UUP itself are beginning to reorganise, and preparations are in train to ensure officers of the party who opposed or were sceptical about the agreement are not turfed out when they come up for re-election at the a.g.m. of the Ulster Unionist Council, the party's governing body, on March 20th. But there will be no leadership challenge in advance of the formation of the executive.
Mr Trimble is one of the few senior figures in the peace process to express confidence there will be decommissioning. Others, whether dissidents in his party, senior sources in Dublin or, above all, republicans themselves, have told the present writer they do not believe for one second that decommissioning will take place in the foreseeable future.
Yet much of current political and diplomatic activity is based, officially at least, on the assumption that the IRA will eventually be forced to hand up or destroy guns. If it does not, the UUP intends to propose a motion to exclude Sinn Fein from the executive. The SDLP says it will not back such a proposal. The next UUP option is to seek a review of the process from the British government, presumably in the teeth of strong nationalist opposition. The March 10th date for appointing ministers at the Assembly has virtually slipped away and the expectation is that Dr Mo Mowlam will opt instead for March 29th. Good Friday falls on April 2nd this year and it is already being spoken of as a "psychological target-date" by which powers should be transferred to the new institutions. The Assembly's Easter break is planned from close of business on April 1st until April 19th: the prospect of appointing ministers on April Fool's Day is an unlikely one. In the meantime, the parties will adjourn to Washington for the St Patrick's Day events. The White House will attempt to knock heads together. However, the disparate nature of the Washington events militates against serious negotiations and President Clinton will need all his legendary powers of persuasion. Meanwhile, the mood in republican circles has rarely been darker. There is a firm determination not to give way on the decommissioning issue.
Some understanding of the republican mindset may be helpful: the more militant elements in particular tend to see things in black-and-white terms and the subtle shadings and shifts of position by the likes of Mr Ahern drive them to distraction. As they see it, an agreement was signed which did not require decommissioning as a precondition for Sinn Fein membership of an executive and they point out that even Mr Trimble grudgingly conceded in the Assembly that "they may be right, but in a very narrow, technical sense only".
Now they are being put in a corner to meet a precondition that, as far as they are concerned, does not appear in the agreement. There has long been a suspicion of politics in republican circles and the perception that politicians are rewriting the agreement has raised that suspicion to its highest level for some time.
Deputy First Minister Seamus Mallon of the SDLP has called for an IRA statement which would reiterate the sentiments expressed by Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams that violence must be "over, done with and gone".
In the current climate of suspicion, this has not been well received by republicans. It is seen as the thin end of the wedge, an attempt to put the IRA "on the back foot" and force further concessions, leading ultimately to the handover of weapons while unionists crow about victory and surrender. Insiders said the effect of the sustained pressure on the republican movement would not be to weaken its stance but to turn it away from the political process altogether. "We made a deal and they didn't keep it," is the attitude. While reports of active preparations to end the ceasefire are being categorically dismissed by informed sources as yet another exercise in "black propaganda", there is a sense of erosion in republican faith in the leadership's peace strategy. This must be deeply worrying for republican supporters of the peace process who see their former associates of the "Real IRA" waiting in the wings to take advantage of any split that might occur.
However, the pessimism in different quarters must be seen against the new landscape created by the referendum votes of May 22nd. Those results constituted a mandate to the politicians to "get on with it" and that mood still survives. Even anti-agreement members of the Assembly are in most cases reluctant to bring down that institution and appear to be enjoying the new-born parliamentary process at Stormont.
Few of them show signs of wishing to trade their spacious offices for a freezing picket-line with a placard that reads, "Ulster Says No". At the moment it's more a case of "Ulster Says Yes - For Now".