Each side is blaming the other for the crisis in the North. But behind the tense meetings, the arguments and gloom, a vital opportunity to build a new democracy may be emerging, writes Frank Millar, London Editor
'I'm neither a prophet nor the son of a prophet," Ian Paisley would intone: "But let me tell you friends . . . there is a new day coming." Somewhat less conspicuously, Gerry Adams, too, fancies his powers of prophecy. And four years ago, the Sinn Féin leader called it absolutely right.
We were in Belfast City Hall on the day after the elections to the new Stormont Assembly in late June 1998. Even the earliest returns told what we both instinctively knew. The Big Man's DUP was doing better than expected, and David Trimble had trouble. "It's going to be trench warfare all the way, isn't it?" said Adams.
How different it had seemed barely two months before when, after the final long night of negotiation, snow gave way to sunshine and historic agreement was declared in Belfast. We were all touched by Tony Blair's "hand of history", politicians and journalists alike, and allowed its magic to wash over us. Hard, cynical hearts beat with hope at the promise of a new beginning for the two communities in Northern Ireland. After all the bloody days it really had been a Good Friday.
Of course, we journalists allowed, this was but the beginning of the end. That said, there was little patience for those who predicted difficulties ahead - even when the subsequent May referendum registered the clearest warning. Government spin doctors were primed to claim their victory, and leading dissident Jeffrey Donaldson made it complete - surprisingly conceding that it seemed a majority of unionists had indeed backed Trimble.
At best, the referendum confirmed unionism split down the middle. Long after the event, Trimble would concede that he in fact "lost" the ensuing Assembly contest and effectively owed his "mandate" as much to proportional representation as to the unionist electorate.
That "mandate" was finally exhausted last October, when a majority of unionist Assembly members refused to back his re-election as First Minister. Incredibly, he survived even that, courtesy of a fraudulent deal which saw Alliance members re-designate themselves as unionists for the purpose of securing Trimble's return.
That willingness to defy majority opinion within his own community may well come back to haunt Trimble, should he survive to lead the Ulster Unionists into another Assembly election. But it is surely compelling evidence at least of his enduring commitment to the Belfast Agreement.
Of course if, as is alleged, Adams really has been privy to Trimble's private dealings with the British government, then the Sinn Féin president will have had a better understanding than most of Trimble's attachment to the Good Friday accord, even as he has repeatedly called it into question.
It is certainly a remarkable tribute to Trimble's staying power and sheer good luck that he has kept the Agreement alive up to this point. It is also crucial to note that, planning beyond Monday's expected collapse of the power sharing Executive, the outgoing First Minister has conspired to leave a way back.
The airwaves may be filled with the sound of UUP fury over Prime Minister Blair's refusal to table a motion proposing Sinn Féin's exclusion from office. The reality, almost certainly, is that suspension is Trimble's privately preferred option. Indeed, if he agrees to the proposal currently under discussion, the only rationale for his leading a "shadow administration" to assist direct rule ministers during suspension would seem to be the presumption that the Executive will eventually be re-instated. So much for the Sinn Féin contention that this week's crisis is the result of a unionist reluctance "to have a Fenian about the place".
Back in June, 1998, of course, Adams was anticipating a daily struggle against the forces of unionist reaction and rejection. And it is true that the Agreement was always going to present a challenge to that minority section of unionism for whom equality and inclusivity are alien concepts, and for whom the Union with Britain has been the presumed guarantor of sectarian ascendancy. However, as Adams knows only too well, it is Trimble who has waged that battle and who bears its scars.
Standing outside 10 Downing Street last Thursday, the Sinn Féin leader maintained the mantra: we were simply having now the crisis the warring factions within unionism had previously resolved to have next spring. It was an impressive and calculated performance by a consummate politician firmly focused on an unfolding blame game.
Yet it was unconvincing this time, probably even to Adams's own ears. For the previous four years Sinn Féin had largely coasted in the (not entirely unwarranted) expectation that if the process went pear-shaped the unionists would contrive to take the blame. Certainly, as he surveyed the prospects that day in June 1998 in the City Hall, Adams wasn't contemplating a scenario in which alleged republican espionage at the heart of the Northern Ireland Office would leave his party caught seemingly bang-to-rights and left to take the rap.
Yet that is how he found himself as he came face-to-face with the British Prime Minister on Thursday. By all accounts, Blair did not, as was widely reported, upbraid Adams with demands that the IRA disband forthwith. As one insider put it: "certain niceties have to be observed". But for Downing Street what Adams had to say was seemingly rather less interesting than the things he left unsaid. The implication - borne out indeed by some of his public comments - was that the Sinn Féin president knew there was "an issue" to be resolved. And, as one Whitehall source put it, "the issue is the future of the IRA".
Throughout the difficult summer - against the backdrop of allegations about Colombia and Castlereagh - Trimble had urged the Northern Ireland Secretary to make an adjudication on the state of the IRA ceasefire. In terms and circumstances the UUP leader could never have anticipated, it was Blair who finally delivered it on Thursday.
Again the prime minister accepted the bona fides of this republican leadership and the sincerity of its commitment to a peaceful future for Northern Ireland. At the same time, Blair left no doubt that the imminent suspension of the Executive and Assembly would be the direct consequence of Sinn Féin's failure thus far to resolve the ambiguities inherent in a "dual strategy" combining politics and continuing paramilitarism.
This is the new agenda for the peace process: accelerating and completing the IRA's transition from terror to democracy - or, as Downing Street spokesmen prefer to put it more delicately, "getting the transition and political tracks back in sync". Crucially, by his own account, it is an agenda in principle at least with which Adams has no difficulty. For sure there are other pressing matters on the Sinn Féin leader's agenda. And the British government will want to act upon them - not least in respect of the ongoing campaign of anti-Catholic violence being perpetrated by loyalist paramilitaries.
Surprisingly, few commentators or nationalist politicians have ever quite caught the connection between "Middle Ulster" unionism's growing disillusion with the entire peace and political processes and their experience at the loyalist coalface. Crime, drug dealing, racketeering and intimidation in the loyalist estates have played their own significant part in that unionist disenchantment. Among many moderate unionists the fear has always been not of building a bridge to bring former terrorists into democracy, but of the ultimate corruption of democracy itself - by permitting them access with their own values and rules of engagement intact.
So there is opportunity here, even at this moment of disappointment and dangerous reversal. Opportunity to revisit the assumptions which have attended the management of the peace process to this point. Opportunity to reverse the mistakes made, albeit for understandable reasons - and by the Irish and British governments as much as Trimble's pro-agreement unionists - granting those unentitled the benefit of considerable and reasonable doubt. And opportunity to renew the push for an inclusive democracy in Northern Ireland on democracy's terms.