The Belfast Agreement may still contain the essentials of a politicalsettlement in Northern Ireland, but space and time to test the assumptionsunderpinning the peace process will be needed on all sides first, writes Frank Millar
Whatever trust existed between Mr David Trimble and the Sinn Féin leadership imploded last Friday amid the sensational allegations of republican intelligence penetration of the Northern Ireland Office. The First Minister and Ulster Unionist leader was already living on borrowed time.
Now space and time may be needed on all sides. For while the Belfast Agreement may still contain the essentials of any political settlement in Northern Ireland, Mr Trimble is not alone in needing to revisit many of the assumptions which have attended the management of the peace process to this point.
Mr Gerry Adams struck some as unbearably smug at the weekend when he suggested that, nine or 10 years down the line, this incredible affair would register as but a hiccup in the evolution of the peace process. He said much the same thing two weeks before as we witnessed the emergence of what might be called the "Trimble-Donaldson leadership" of the Ulster Unionist Party, ostensibly united around the demand that republicans complete the transition from terror to democracy or face the collapse of the Belfast Agreement by mid-January.
One leading supporter of Mr Trimble angrily dismissed the latest soundbite by Mr Adams, which smacks of what he calls historical determinism and its suggestion that Sinn Féin intends to sit this crisis out. The party leadership appears determined to make no significant concession of the kind now desperately sought by the Secretary of State, Dr John Reid, invoking only the authority of Sinn Féin's popular mandate in answer to the demands of the British government and Ulster's unionists.
That said, Dr Reid will have duly noted Mr Adams's assertion yesterday that, even if the institutions of government do collapse within days, "in the longer term all of us [the Northern Ireland parties] are going to have to come together again." Likewise, as he reluctantly considers the alternative option of suspension, Dr Reid will have drawn reassurance from Mr Martin McGuinness's vow that, in any event, he for one will be continuing with Sinn Féin's peace strategy.
Just last Thursday - only hours before what some in his own office considered a "cack-handed" police raid on Sinn Féin's Stormont office - Dr Reid again accepted the bona fides of the republican leadership, and acknowledged the difficulties it had faced in managing the republican movement down the path of peace. But he insisted they could not continue to ride two horses at once, telling them it was time to complete the transition to democracy.
It seems Dr Reid revised his estimate of how far the republicans have yet to travel following his briefing by the new Chief Constable of the PSNI, Mr Hugh Orde, on Friday evening. Certainly some close observers thought that the explanation for the contrasting demeanour of the Secretary of State - on Friday urging no rush to judgment, and on Sunday, as one put it, "sounding a lot like Jeffrey Donaldson."
That said, this hard-headed Scotsman's assessment is almost certainly that "going back to war" has been a declining option for the IRA with the passage of time - and that even the most unreconstructed republican would realise the folly of such a course at a point when Mr Blair seems ready for war in Iraq as America's leading, and perhaps only, ally.
In other words, if Dr Reid feels forced into crisis management now - with suspension to be preferred only as an alternative to free fall - he will not consider it the end of politics in Northern Ireland.
The man set to force his hand is Mr Trimble. The First Minister will be in Downing Street this afternoon for talks with Mr Blair and Dr Reid, at the start of what Number 10 still hopes will be a determined effort to avoid meltdown. The SDLP leader and Deputy First Minister, Mr Mark Durkan, is expected tomorrow ahead of the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, with Mr Adams scheduled for Thursday.
Downing Street insiders almost certainly calculate that suspension is more likely than not. However, the official line is that nothing is inevitable, and that everything turns on Sinn Féin's appreciation of the dramatic reversal in its fortunes inflicted in the past few days. Nobody in Whitehall appears to know what republican concession might be enough to keep the Ulster Unionists in the Executive, short of the certain knowledge that "it would have to be big."
The Taoiseach himself has pointed to IRA disbandment as the logical and inevitable end-point in the republican journey. London, likewise, thinks the republican leadership knows this but, as one source puts it, "has tried to keep unity by not winding down too soon."
Time plainly is of the essence. But within the next week? In these circumstances? Ahead of a possible election which Sinn Féin must calculate could see the end of Mr Trimble and present a tough new configuration of the unionist leadership?
And - arguably the biggest question of all - even if were possible, and the republican leadership so disposed, is Mr Trimble in the marketplace for yet another "new beginning" just ahead of his party's annual conference on Saturday week?
The answer to that is almost certainly no, because Mr Trimble is apparently convinced that Sinn Féin's political judgment through a range of delicate negotiations has been informed by "a criminal conspiracy" he believes "goes right to the heart" of that party's leadership. And while Dr Reid had hoped for two weeks in which to rescue a grave situation, the suspicion is that Mr Trimble is operating to a much shorter timetable.
Authoritative sources have told The Irish Times that Mr Trimble expects to leave Downing Street this afternoon with "clarity" about Mr Blair's intention to propose Sinn Féin's expulsion from the Executive and, assuming the SDLP's refusal to go along with that, proceed to suspension. The unspoken alternative is that the Ulster Unionists will instead plunge the process into free fall.
And while the DUP's threatened withdrawal today has added to the theatre, it remains for Mr Trimble to make the critical call that will determine the fate of the Executive.