Here are three steps which, if taken immediately, would help to revive public confidence in the peace process:
1. A halt to the blame game. London and Dublin must demonstrate a more consistent degree of trust. This is meant to be a partnership.
2. A reaffirmation of the primacy of the Belfast Agreement. The two governments may have to admit that it is not possible, at the moment, to implement devolution. But there is much more to the agreement than devolved government.
3. The removal of the decommissioning problem from the immediate political context of "Guns v Government". The issue of arms must not be allowed to impede progress on other fronts.
Failure to deal with any one of these problems could threaten the peace process as a whole. Let me try and explain.
1. The Blame Game. For the past fortnight the air has been loud with recriminations. This may be more or less inevitable in the case of Sinn Fein and the unionists, but the two governments should desist from accusations of bad faith. The effect is to diminish trust between the main players in this process and to poison the atmosphere in a way which creates opportunities for those, on both sides, who have always opposed the Belfast Agreement. It also makes the voters begin to lose hope that political progress is possible.
HAVING READ all the statements, it seems to me that most reasonable people would admit that there were two sides to the argument over suspension. On the one hand, the Irish Government, together with Sinn Fein and Seamus Mallon, believed there was movement in the IRA's second report to de Chastelain, and that Peter Mandelson should have waited to explore this further before standing down the executive and other institutions.
The Northern Ireland Secretary replies that he postponed suspension for as long as possible to give Sinn Fein the opportunity to put the republican case directly to David Trimble, but that there was not enough on offer to convince the unionist leader.
The British government is deeply concerned about the febrile state of the unionist political community which, it feels, is not sufficiently understood in Dublin. "The wolves are still circling Trimble," I was told by a senior British source, who also expressed apprehension that we could be facing a new alliance between Jeffrey Donaldson and Peter Robinson, which could expect to draw support from young hard-liners in both the main unionist parties.
Bertie Ahern must recognise this danger. But Peter Mandelson also has to accept that there are considerable difficulties within the republican movement that could threaten Gerry Adams and those close to him.
2. The Primacy of the Agreement. Both governments have been at pains to reaffirm their commitment to the accord. With the political institutions suspended, there is a widespread anxiety that the whole agreement is in danger. But arrangements for a devolved administration in Northern Ireland and for North-South structures account for only 10 out of the 35 pages of the agreement. There are other matters of substance - policing, human rights on both sides of the Border, an equality commission, victims and reconciliation, economic and cultural issues, and so on.
There is a strong case for having the two governments state that devolution is impossible at the moment because of a lack of trust between the local parties in Northern Ireland. It remains an important objective that the political institutions should be reinstated as soon as possible. In the meantime, the two governments will try to build the necessary trust.
3. Decommissioning. If progress is seen to be made on other aspects of the agreement, such as policing, the mood within the republican movement should soften. In the past week, at least until Tuesday, a great deal of emphasis had been put on "equivalence" as the way ahead, that is that any movement by the IRA on weapons would be matched by a scaling down of British security.
The fact that senior British army sources and the IRA have both denounced this idea as wholly unacceptable does not mean there is no merit in it, rather that these two organisations are reacting instinctively to defend their own interests.
Peter Mandelson has said he would find it difficult to defend any equivalence between British army and IRA weapons. But the Secretary of State has also said he is not looking for surrender from the IRA, as indeed have leading unionists.
They appear to accept the need for a formula which would have to include a time-frame for dealing with the arms issue but would allow the IRA to emerge with its dignity intact. In the past, Sinn Fein sources have expressed cautious approval for the idea of a ceremony of reconciliation which would involve all the parties to the conflict of the past 30 years. Despite the fact that it has been rejected in principle by both the British army and the IRA, this idea deserves much more careful consideration by the politicians.
Such a ceremony of reconciliation would have the merit of admitting that violent and murderous deeds were committed by all sides, and great suffering inflicted right across the board. This might meet the republican movement's need for a recognition that the blame does not lie exclusively with the IRA and that its long campaign was not criminal. The Ministry of Defence expresses outrage at such a proposal but surely it is not beyond the bounds of a more sophisticated political imagination to concede that the guns used on Bloody Sunday, to take an obvious example, inflicted death on innocent victims and may have been deployed illegally?
Politics has been described as the conduct of war by other means. In this instance the task facing the politicians is to lay a long and bitter conflict to rest. They have already demonstrated great skill and imagination in facing that challenge. It's important to remember this and to encourage them to even greater efforts, rather than to shovel out blame for the bumpy patches along the way.