The light of hope grows dim in the North. With three days to the introduction of legislation at Westminster suspending the institutions established under the Belfast Agreement, the gap between the republican movement and the rest of opinion on the island appears to be widening. The modest proposal by Mr John Hume that a quantity of Semtex might be left for Gen de Chastelain elicited a swift and hostile response from Mr Mitchel McLaughlin. Mr Gerry Adams bespeaks a growing air of exasperation and anger. On-the-ground reports from republican districts describe a widespread resistance to decommissioning.
A hardening of attitudes is also reported from within the ranks of moderate unionism. An insistence that the name of the Royal Ulster Constabulary be retained in the reorganisation of policing may, apparently, be linked to decommissioning demands at next weekend's meeting of the Ulster Unionist council. Mr David Trimble's room for manoeuvre within his own party is being further reduced. What he might have been able to sell to his party even a few short weeks ago would now be rejected out of hand. It is virtually impossible to see the movement on either side which might stay Mr Mandelson's hand on Friday.
It is tempting to seize upon the wording of the IRA statement issued at the weekend which said that the IRA recognises that the issue of arms "needs to be dealt with in an acceptable way and this is a necessary objective of a genuine peace process". The statement seems to reflect a very different position from earlier IRA statements which declared that there would be no decommissioning of weapons in any circumstances. Here is an acknowledgment that the question of arms has to be addressed. But these words are vague and capable of being interpreted in so many ways that only the very trusting or gullible would take them as a signing-on for IRA decommissioning in the near future. The same statement rejects any suggestion that the IRA has ever entered into any understanding or undertaking in regard to decommissioning.
For here is the core of the issue. The IRA part of the republican movement does not consider itself bound by what has been agreed by Sinn Fein. Perhaps nobody should be surprised by that, for Sinn Fein is essentially under the authority of the IRA. The lesser cannot bind the greater. If Mr Gerry Adams and his senior party lieutenants could bring the movement as a whole around to accept that decommissioning must take place, they would presumably have done so by now. That they may be able to achieve this in time must be everyone's fervent hope. But it is unlikely in the extreme that they can do anything which Mr Trimble can credibly put before his council this weekend as a basis for continuing in government.
The best intelligence suggests that there is no threat to Mr Adams's leadership and that the peace process, as the IRA's own statement puts it, is under no threat. These are positive elements in the calculus. The process owes much to the vision and resilience of Mr Adams and his supporters and it is important that the initiative does not pass from them to the sort of people who will bomb crowded country hotels on a Sunday evening. But it is also essential that the leadership of moderate unionism be safeguarded and supported. Suspension of the institutions - however traumatic - must be the preferred option to the uncontrolled collapse which would follow upon the resignation of Mr Trimble.