From start to finish a striking feature of the whole prolonged peace process has been the prevalence of ambiguity in every aspect of what was being done, writes Garret FitzGerald
Ambiguity about the relationship between Sinn Féin and the IRA; ambiguity about the commitment to decommissioning of arms; ambiguity about the meaning of the ceasefire; ambiguity about the relationship between successive Irish governments and Sinn Féin.
On the first point: is Sinn Féin still the public arm of the IRA, as was clearly the case in earlier decades? Or has it developed a life of its own, with its own distinct objectives?
Or has there been an even more complex relationship, with the Sinn Féin leadership constituting a major, but not perhaps the only, element in the IRA Army Council?
How much reliance was to be placed on the commitment of Sinn Féin in the Belfast Agreement to work for the decommissioning of arms? Did this mean that the IRA had agreed to decommissioning, or that it hadn't agreed, but Sinn Féin was purporting for public purposes to differentiate itself from the IRA in this respect?
Or did it reflect merely a hope or intention on the part of Sinn Féin to seek to persuade hard-liners in the IRA to agree in due course to decommissioning?
As for the ceasefire: it was described as "complete", but was not described as "final", and was not final, as it turned out on February 9th, 1996, when the bomb went off at Canary Wharf. Against whom was fire to be ceased? Against the security forces in Northern Ireland, clearly. And when it was in force it also excluded the use of explosives.
But the use of force was not ceased against the IRA's own nationalist population, because those whom the IRA judged to be "informers" or drug-dealers remained targets, and many hundreds of nationalists were also subjected to "punishment beatings" and others to exile accompanied by a threat of death if they returned.
As to the relationship with the Irish government, Sinn Féin-IRA seemed to give it some kind of belated recognition for the first time in three-quarters of a century, and even promoted the idea of a "pan-nationalist front" with our government - a notion that the Reynolds government allowed to be promoted without challenge, in the interest of jollying along the peace process.
But that didn't stop the IRA in our State from launching a murderous attack on the Garda Síochána, for which they have since claimed responsibility by demanding the release of those concerned under the terms of the Belfast Agreement.
No one should be surprised that unionists, whose Protestantism makes them aspire to straight talking, have found all this very hard to take, or that as a result they have been deeply divided about how to respond to this welter of ambivalence and double-talk.
But it is not only Northern unionists who have found all this hard to take: that is true also of the one-half of the Northern Ireland population who support the SDLP, and of very many people in this State.
Nevertheless, the harsh truth is that without all this literally demoralising ambiguity, we would not have come to the point where 35 years of continuous violence in the North, and 80 years of sporadic violence in our own State that has cost the lives of politicians and many members of our security forces, is about to end.
Just 20 years have now passed since the establishment of the New Ireland Forum and the subsequent initiation of negotiations with Margaret Thatcher started the long and complex chain of events that have led us to where we are today.
In all honesty I have to say that, while two decades ago it was my hope, and indeed calculation, that what was then begun would lead eventually to the restoration of peace and stability in Northern Ireland, I did not then understand just how complex and long-drawn-out would be the later stages of this process.
The truth is that in a situation of this kind it is not possible to foresee what might happen more than two or thee stages ahead.
But, with all the clarity of hindsight, I can now see that, while in the mid-1980s we could create the conditions that would encourage the IRA to rethink its "Armalite and ballot box" strategy, much more would be needed to enable the leaders of Sinn Féin-IRA eventually to bring almost all of their activists and supporters with them along the road to democracy in the post-Hillsborough period.
We can now see that for that to happen, it was going to be necessary for the governments of the two states to pursue what in fact became a very murky path of compromise.
In the complex negotiations of the past 10 years the leaders of Sinn Féin-IRA had one clear advantage. They could - and did - repeatedly play the card of the difficulties they faced in bringing their hard-line supporters with them. It was a powerful card, for the simple reason that these leaders obviously did have great difficulty with their activists and supporters.
But those who were negotiating with them could never know in relation to any particular issue just how far they would have to go in order to help the republican leadership to win the support they needed to complete the process.
This card has been played to the last, and with great skill. But the problem with this kind of tactic is that when it has been deployed with such success over such a long period, it may be difficult for those concerned to know when to stop, and to settle.
But when the Irish Government decided that the time had come for the game to end, joining the British government on the "sanctions" issue, the Sinn Féin-IRA leadership should have known they were at the end of the road.
Why then did they fail to respond on Thursday by the necessary "acts of completion".
On this issue, as on so many others in this long-drawn-out affair, it is impossible at the time of writing to make a judgment.
Once this point has been reached, the bargaining power of Sinn Féin-IRA runs out.
For they need this matter to be brought to completion just as much as, if not more than, the two governments do. After so many years of clever negotiation, playing their cards with great skill, they cannot afford failure at the end of the road.