Republicans and Government sources close to the political negotiations in Northern Ireland were unable at the weekend to speculate about when or if any positive news about decommissioning will come about.
Without the timetable or confirmation by the head of the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning that IRA weapons have been destroyed, there will be no further unionist movement back towards Stormont, even in the six-week moratorium which has been established to break this impasse.
If there is no decommissioning and unionists don't back down, government sources believe elections then become the next most likely scenario, possibly around November. Neither government is happy about this but it seems the most democratic way of settling this particular problem, they say.
During those six weeks, the British government will publish the Patten policing implementation package and the report into the Northern Ireland criminal justice system. That report will go some way to dismantling the extraordinary apparatus of "special" or "emergency" powers of arrest and detention and the non-jury Diplock courts, named after the British Law Lord who drew up the legislation for the anti-terrorist laws and courts in the early 1970s.
Lord Diplock created the North's non-jury courts and legal implements. They effectively placed the onus on the accused in a criminal trial to prove his or her innocence rather than the other way around at a time when the North was undergoing mass street disorder and insurrection. Witnesses were intimidated and, in one case at least, shot dead.
The courts became one of the tools used to defeat terrorism. While they processed hundreds of prisoners through interrogation centres to the Maze Prison, the reputation of the criminal justice system was allowed to suffer.
Northern Ireland judges had to preside over case after case where the only evidence against a defendant was an alleged oral or written admission taken in one of the three main interrogation centres - Castlereagh in east Belfast; Gough in Armagh and at Strand Road in Derry.
This process was shown to involve inhuman and degrading treatment in a report by another British judge in the late 1970s. The Bennett report on abuses in the RUC's holding centres led to a different tack with the RUC switching to the use of "accomplice witnesses" or "supergrasses".
A series of huge show trials took place with up to 40 defendants in the dock of the two biggest courtrooms in the Crumlin Road courthouse in Belfast. This time a Northern Ireland judge, Lord Justice Lowry, pulled the plug on the use of these cases and all the cases collapsed in the mid-1980s.
The present inquiry into the criminal justice system was instituted under the Belfast Agreement and is largely the work of senior local barristers including a leading defence QC. The report should lead to a greater normalisation of the legal apparatus.
The dismantling of the antiterrorist courts and legislation is another important landmark in the slow, difficult but inexorable move towards normality in Northern Ireland.
Despite the clamour from local politicians over the past week, there are indisputable signs that Northern Ireland is progressing from a deeply troubled state to one where consensus and normal politics are becoming accepted.
The organised violence used by both republicans and loyalists for blunt effect has almost gone away.
It was possible on Friday and Saturday night to drive around north and west Belfast without seeing a single stone or petrolbomb thrown. This was also the weekend of the 30th anniversary of internment (August 9th, 1971) and the 20th anniversary of the Maze hunger strike. These anniversaries would previously have been sufficient excuse for massive street disorder and rioting in Catholic west Belfast. However, the Falls Road remained resolutely quiet over the weekend, having previously enjoyed two weeks of the local Feile street festival.
The festival was initiated by Sinn Fein as a way of stopping the internment anniversary rioting which was a perennial cause of annoyance to the party's electoral base. If the IRA wanted a return to violence it could have sparked ferocious rioting over the weekend but this, eventually, would be politically damaging to Sinn Fein.
Also the IRA would find itself in the ludicrous position of engaging in violence in support of Stormont institutions while unionists were apparently doing their best to bring them down. (One could be forgiven for wondering whatever happened to the 1970s and 1980s republican war cry "Smash Stormont".)
If any party has anything to gain from new elections it is Sinn Fein, which earlier this year achieved the historic feat of beating the SDLP to become the main party of Northern nationalism. A new election could see it mop up more seats in nationalist areas.
The DUP, too, has called for elections as it expects to make more gains against Mr Trimble's Ulster Unionists.
There is little prospect of political movement in the coming weeks. The police and criminal justice reforms are of significant import but will not ease the problems in the political process. If Sinn Fein is really to seek a return of devolved government to the North, then something concrete - as it were - will have to happen over decommissioning.
Without confirmation by the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning that IRA weapons have been destroyed, there will be no further unionist movement back towards Stormont, even in the six-week moratorium which has been established to break this impasse.