There is a huge call here for republicans as well as for the DUP, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor.
It will be a prayerful weekend for Ian Paisley, probably for Tony Blair, too. On Monday, the DUP leader will sip tea with the British Prime Minister. Afterwards he must make the call of all calls. Mr Blair must also summon up every last reserve of his personal powers of persuasion, subtlety and sensitivity to convince the Doc to make the right call, as the governments see it. Divine assistance is needed.
The success or failure of this huge enterprise is now down to the subject of a few Kodak Instamatic snaps.
Even the children seemed to get the gag the other night at the Jack in the Beanstalk panto in the Grand Opera House, when Mai McFettridge cracked, in answer to some ostensibly non-political question from Jack: "Ah, there'll be no photographs, love." How sad is that?
But could it all collapse over a few photographs? Would Ian Paisley sacrifice the big picture for the sake of a little picture, so to speak? The IRA wearing retirement medals, its weapons encased in concrete, Sinn Féin supporting the police, Ian Paisley posing for his portrait as First Minister - could all that be lost over pictures? It just doesn't seem logical.
Of course, you're ahead of the game - what's logic got to do with it? Still, there's no getting away from the fact that huge decisions must be made in the coming days, and those decisions, amazingly, centre on photographs.
The governments would wish it otherwise, but they believe that the visual element to decommissioning is crucial.
That's why, in their blueprint for restoring devolution, they proposed that the decommissioning chief, General John de Chastelain, take a few pictures of the IRA rendering its arsenals beyond use. These would be produced when it was clear that the DUP was sharing power with Sinn Féin, i.e. on or after devolution day.
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the British Prime Minister have no real idea whether the IRA would consent to this proposal. Regardless, the Doc says even that would not meet his demands. He wants photographs of IRA decommissioning. He wants them before he will go into government with Sinn Féin. And he wants them published before devolution as well.
DUP Assembly member Sammy Wilson told The Irish Times yesterday that his party was not seeking to humiliate republicans by demanding pictures; rather, the DUP needed the photographs to reassure unionists that there would be no smoke-and-mirrors trickery to decommissioning. Pictures can also be doctored, of course, but that's by the by.
Three times in his speech to republicans in Navan on Wednesday the Sinn Féin president, Gerry Adams, said republicans would not be "humiliated", a comment he repeated in London and Belfast. This was a rejoinder to Dr Paisley's "sackcloth and ashes" and "let's humiliate the IRA" comments.
Mr Adams's remarks seemed to be Sinn Féin-speak for saying there will be no photographs.
So is there any room for compromise here? Mr Adams and his colleagues, when asked about the pictures, repeat mantra-like, to the point of great tedium, that this is a matter between the IRA and the general. That's what he also says to the governments, we are assured.
Yet Mr Ahern and Mr Blair hold out hope that Sinn Féin could make some concessions here, not based on anything Mr Adams says, but on the fact that, while he has not said "yes" to pictures, neither has he said "no". Because this process has been going on for so long, perhaps the two leaders think they have an intuitive feel for what Mr Adams and the IRA might tolerate.
Mr Wilson's argument for pictures makes sense, but nonetheless instinct and experience keeps insisting that the IRA will not hand the DUP an election propaganda tool by allowing the pictures to be published.
There is a huge call here for republicans as well. Would they settle for the middle ground of permitting General de Chastelain to show Dr Paisley and some of his senior colleagues shots of decommissioned weapons, but not allow them to be published? Would that conform to Mr Adams's line in Navan that Sinn Féin "believes this matter can be dealt with to the satisfaction of all reasonable people in the context of a comprehensive agreement and under the remit of the IICD"? We should know the answer by the middle of next week.
Regardless of the pictures, we are told that this time the IRA is prepared to allow a Catholic and a Protestant cleric to oversee IRA decommissioning with General de Chastelain. That must go a considerable way towards providing the assurance unionists require.
Here's an idea that need not be as far-fetched as might appear on first consideration. Dr Paisley's son Kyle is a minister in the Free Presbyterian Church. Why couldn't he be the Protestant witness?
Imagine it:
Dr Paisley: "Did the IRA get rid of the guns, Son?"
Kyle Paisley: "They did, Da."
Dr Paisley: "And the Semtex?"
Kyle Paisley: "All gone."
Dr Paisley: "And the rocket-launchers and mortars?"
Kyle Paisley: "Turned into ploughshares."
Dr Paisley: "Wonderful. I can now tell my people that we have the verification we wanted."
OK, maybe it is a mite fanciful, but some variation of that scenario could work. As stated so often, it is all down to the Doc, and if Dr Paisley says he believes the IRA has decommissioned its arsenals, then unionists will believe him, especially if he was shown some photographs as well.
The Alliance leader, David Ford, probably read it best when he said: "I think this will work if Ian Paisley can make the distinction between what he wants and what he can live with."