Sir, - The failure of the Hillsborough Declaration to break the decommissioning impasse has pointed up the fact (previously known by some) that despite all the badgering from London, Dublin and Washington, the IRA is not in the business of surrendering its weapons.
And why should it? Has it not been its guns that has brought the republican movement this far? Its leaders have been welcomed into the White House and have entered the portals of 10 Downing Street to sue for peace, all without handing in a round or an ounce. And as Gerry Adams always maintained would come to pass, unionists now sit at the same table talking to Sinn Fein.
Where, then, does this leave the peace process? It could theoretically move on without republicans but how likely a scenario is that really? Have not the British and Irish governments repeated time and time again that this must be an inclusive process? Have not John Hume and Seamus Mallon both said that the SDLP is not going to exclude anyone and did not an Irish Government minister once famously quip that the process wasn't worth a penny candle without republicans? Indeed the whole process was built round their inclusion, so to proceed without them would seem self-defeating. All this would suggest that the prospect of an executive being formed with Sinn Fein being frozen out is at best fairly slim.
Will the process collapse? It will not be allowed to, for as Mo Mowlam and Tony Blair have stated on several occasions, there can be no turning back. No one will be allowed to bring this house down. Too much time and effort has been invested by too many people and political careers depend on its survival.
Can Sinn Fein be hard-balled? Not if past records are anything to go by and anyway, what sanctions can the governments really use against the IRA? Certainly none was built into the Belfast Agreement and therein stands that document's inherent weakness. Sinn Fein's case against being excluded from power is that it is honouring the terms of the Agreement and its argument that you can't decommission 145,000 votes is indeed a powerful one.
Where, then, does that leave the Ulster Unionists? Caught between the proverbial rock and a hard place, it would seem.
Already the UUP has softened considerably the line taken before the Assembly elections which said there had to be a definitive statement from republicans that the war was over; targeting, training, weapon procurement and punishment beatings had to cease; disarmament had to be completed within two years; there had to be a progressive abandonment and dismantling of paramilitary structures and the fate of the disappeared made known. Now all that is being asked is a verifiable and creditable start be made to decommissioning, a woolly requirement that no one in the party is willing to define.
It's beginning to look as if it is becoming a matter of conditioning unionist minds to accept the fact that there will be no hand-over of weapons and that if they want the opportunity to have a say in their own government they will have to give republicans the benefit of the doubt and form an executive with Sinn Fein.
A refusal to set up the Executive and to have the Assembly fall would leave Mr Trimble as the unionist leader who helped secure the release of IRA prisoners, guided his party and people to formally accept the involvement of the Irish government in the governance of Northern Ireland through cross-border bodies, and who left them with nothing to show for their painful compromises.
As David Trimble said recently on leaving Downing Street, there were some people who were going to have to make difficult decisions in the weeks ahead. I wonder who? - Yours, etc., Colin McAuley,
Carrickfergus, Co Antrim.