This week's unexpected setback to the Northern Ireland peace process is all the more serious because of the general acrimony that has accompanied the final stages of the negotiations - and because the breakdown has presented the two governments with an invidious choice between two courses of action, both of which are likely to strengthen the more extreme political wings of the two Northern communities, writes Garret Fitzgerald.
Had the long-drawn-out peace process concluded with a clear-cut abandonment of the paramilitary role of the IRA, this would have enabled David Trimble to go to the unionist electorate with a sustainable argument that a combination of patience and firmness on the part of the UUP had achieved a remarkable success - in striking contrast to the futile negativism of the DUP.
Instead, the failure of the process at this late stage and in this manner left David Trimble almost certain to lose marginal seats to the DUP in a late May election, and with Ian Paisley still leader of that party, a Northern Ireland Executive could not have been re-established.
But the alternative, involving a postponement of the Assembly election, which is the course chosen by Tony Blair, offers little prospect of a better outcome, because this is also bound to increase support for the DUP. And if the Belfast Agreement is ever to deliver a power-sharing Northern Ireland administration an election cannot be postponed indefinitely. Thus the only merit of a postponement would seem to be a vague hope that given time, something constructive might turn up.
It is difficult to fit this debacle into what had seemed until very recently to be the strategy of Adams and McGuinness. Quite simply, it is difficult to believe that they would have actually planned to get themselves into the humiliating position of being seen to have caved in twice to British pressure to clarify a statement by the IRA - but nevertheless ending up without the election in which they had clearly hoped to gain further political ground.
It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that at the very end of this long-drawn-out process the hands of the Sinn Féin leadership became tied, and that they finally failed to undo the knot that bound them. If they have seemed cross with the British government because of this outcome, that may at least partly reflect annoyance with whoever among their own supporters may have landed them in this situation.
But it does not make much sense for them to try to blame the whole of this debacle on the British government allegedly caving in to UUP pressure for further clarification. For the plain fact is that the Irish Government took the same position as the British on the ambiguity of the IRA statement and on Adams's subsequent attempts at clarification.
Our Government could not have acted otherwise. For, on the issue of the termination of acts of violence the IRA statement confined itself to saying that its strategies and disciplines will not be inconsistent with the Good Friday agreement. Now, over the years this State has lost over a dozen members of its security forces, as well as a member of our Oireachtas, to IRA guns, and this kind of bland fudge on violence was just as unacceptable to our Government as it was to the British government and the unionists.
A gloss on the IRA statement was then offered (not by the IRA itself but by Gerry Adams, who has always denied being a member of that organisation). He said that "in my view the IRA statement deals definitively with these concerns about alleged IRA activity" and that "any such activities which in any way undermine the peace process and the Good Friday agreement should not be happening". That brought the issue no further: indeed it could be argued to have weakened rather than strengthened the force of the original IRA statement.
Gerry Adams's ultimate gloss on the issue last Wednesday belatedly substituted the word "will" for "should". But he still refused to say unequivocally that targeting, procurement of weapons and punishment beatings will cease, which is what we all need to hear. For him then to claim that he had made a "clear and unambiguous statement" that gave Tony Blair "the answer he had asked for" was palpable nonsense. It was also too blatant an evasion to be acceptable to the democratic people and Government of Ireland.
The simple fact is that this final wording from Gerry Adams proposed to leave it to the IRA to decide unilaterally what will or will not "undermine the peace process and the Good Friday agreement". Now, nothing that has happened in the past five years suggests that the IRA's judgment on punishment beatings - to mention but one of the matters at issue - would coincide with that of the Irish people or its Government on these brutalities.
Why did it come to this in the end? First of all, given its history, there were bound to be some members of the IRA who at the end of the day would be reluctant to leave themselves no loophole for any future use of violence - and for whom some measure of ambiguity appeared necessary. And once such a final path of ambiguity had unhappily been embarked upon in this final stage of the peace process, presumably because of internal pressures within Sinn Féin/IRA, there was clearly a danger that those who had provoked this last-minute difficulty would then baulk at Adams being allowed to concede all three of the clarifications needed to bring this matter to a successful conclusion. For that would mean loss of face. The IRA has always been very sensitive to any suggestion of "surrender".
Where do we all go from here? Two things might help to ease tensions.
A willingness by the British government at next Tuesday's Farmleigh meeting to agree to implement many of the actions foreshadowed in the Joint Declaration of the two governments, published yesterday, where these are not directly related to the IRA and its activities.
Sinn Féin/IRA could show good faith by deciding to abandon those practices about which they have been reluctant to make explicit commitments. If, during the summer months ahead, IRA punishment beatings were seen to have ceased, the issue of verbal commitments might loom less large in the autumn, which could open the way for a fresh start.