Within the next 24 hours it will almost certainly be clear whether the Mitchell review of the Belfast Agreement will have ended in another stalemate. Most of the indicators, at this writing, are gloomy.
A British prime minister once said that every time there seemed to be an answer to the "Irish Question" the Irish changed the question. There might be more than a grain of truth in that aphorism if applied to the tortuous processes of negotiation which have gone on since the endorsement of the Agreement by the electorate, North and South, almost a year and a half ago.
Some will stress, in despair and frustration, that the Agreement was never intended to be about the decommissioning of paramilitary weapons. This is so, yet decommissioning is written into the text. It is an indispensable part of the arrangements which Sinn Fein, among others, signed up for. If it does not come about, the Agreement is a fraud and a pretence. Supposedly democratic institutions of government, partly administered by people who maintain private, paramilitary forces would be nothing more than a sham and a poison.
A transitional period in which those with paramilitary connections move into office may have to be endured. It happened in this State in 1922. But even now, as yet another round of discussions comes to crisis-point, the IRA and its political associates in Sinn Fein are unwilling or unable to declare simply and without equivocation that decommissioning will take place at all. The two governments and the other parties which endorsed the Agreement have made it clear that they can accept a start to decommissioning which would be simultaneous with the setting up of an executive. They would very probably settle for a start to decommissioning within a fixed time from the creation of an executive. But we have yet to hear a clear and unambiguous response from the republicans that they are prepared to make any gesture at all on their weaponry.
We have not even heard, as the Archbishop of Armagh, Dr Eames, highlighted earlier this week, a declaration that the weapons are permanently out of use or that the "war" is irrevocably over. Sinn Fein signed up to the objective of eliminating paramilitary weapons by May of next year but now declares that it is unable to secure this from the IRA. When the gains and losses since the signing of the Agreement are calculated, it must be apparent to any fair observer that the republicans have secured a great deal without giving anything comparable in return.
Senator Mitchell will very likely return to the United States this weekend, his review a failure in that it will not have reconciled republican and unionist demands. If that happens, it does not necessarily mean the end of the Agreement, much less does it signify that the peace process is in a terminal condition. But it would confirm the ineluctable truth that unless there is compromise on both sides, the decommissioning obstacle is not going to be got over or circumvented. And so far, the republicans have shown no firm or clear willingness to be part of a compromise.
Mr Gerry Adams, Mr Martin McGuinness and their supporters have brought republicans a huge distance politically and their achievement in this must not be undervalued. Few on the nationalist side have been willing to criticise for fear of undermining them or weakening their position. But Dr Joe Hendron of the SDLP has contributed a welcome dose of honesty to the debate in pointing out that it is the republicans, more than anyone else, who have it in their power to make the Agreement work now. They hold the "ace card", as he put it. In one form or another, they have the illegal guns. They have yet to tell General de Chastelain, simply, clearly and honestly that they are willing, in terms acceptable to him, to put them beyond use.