It is regrettable and undeniable that in the week in which the Nobel prizes were to be presented in Oslo, the peace process in Northern Ireland became sloughed under the twin forces of unionist mistrust and paramilitaries' unwillingness to disarm. The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, declared in the Dail on Tuesday that the process had "not moved an inch" in four weeks. Later he said it would be "a terrible mistake" if agreement could not be reached before Christmas on the new institutions to be established under the Belfast Agreement. But it would be wrong to yield to pessimism at this stage or to place too much significance on the paradox of timing.
What is described in Mr Ahern's comments - and those from other political figures - is not a loss of anything that has been achieved. Rather is it a failure to maintain progress towards securing, as quickly as possible, the full benefits of the agreement which was entered into in April. The very great advances which have been made in the eight months since must not be lost sight of. Violence has not been eliminated but it has ceased to be a daily feature of life. It no longer holds the entire population in constant fear. The huge security presence on the streets has been scaled down. A successful programme of prisoner releases has strengthened the support for peace without any evidence of a return to crime by those who have been freed. Work has begun on reviewing the criminal justice system. And for all that the spoils of office and the precise sharing of authority have not yet been determined, there is a measure of agreement on how the new institutions should work.
Above all else, a solid beginning has been made in the building of trust between the two communities in Northern Ireland. There is disagreement on many detailed aspects of the future administration. But there is a firm, middle-ground acceptance that there can be no victory or dominance for one side over the other. There is a recognition that the two communities must agree how to share the relatively small patch of ground that is Northern Ireland. This is the consensus which made the Belfast Agreement possible in April and which saw it endorsed by a great majority of the people of Ireland in May. Such a consensus may not seem a remarkable thing to people who have lived within a functioning democracy for generations. But it is a wondrous and new thing in Northern Ireland. It is because that consensus was built, that David Trimble and John Hume were yesterday honoured with the Nobel Peace Prize. Each man has led his own community out from behind its barricades and fortifications to meet the other on common ground. It is a form of leadership which requires stamina, vision, courage and the willingness to take risks. Twenty years ago, 10 years ago perhaps, neither the unionists nor the nationalists of Northern Ireland were prepared to contemplate an accommodation with each other. It was as much the resistance to power-sharing as to the proposed Council of Ireland that brought down Brian Faulkner's executive in 1974. It was the subliminal urge to wrest back the "Fourth Green Field" that for so long prevented nationalist thinking from developing on lines which were not territorial or expansionist.
It is not uncommon for Nobel peace laureates to be honoured with their work yet unfinished. Both men recognised that reality in their acceptance speeches yesterday and both, with varying degrees of explicitness, called for further flexibility in order to secure the completion of what was agreed at Belfast in April. Realistically, it appears that the present conditions of stasis will have to be endured for a while longer and that agreement on the new institutions may have to wait until after Christmas. But Mr Trimble is right and his deputy, Mr John Taylor, is right when they stress that there must be movement on decommissioning before these institutions can function. The initiative lies, as it has since the beginning of this impasse, within the hands of the paramilitaries.