OPINION/Frank Millar First let's sign-off on the events of the week. Ulster Unionism's next crisis is scheduled for September.
Will the UUP's men in suits take the opportunity of David Trimble's holiday to effect a coup? Will Jeffrey Donaldson risk doing a Michael Heseltine and conclude the "present circumstances" offer his best bet for the leadership or might he continue to play Jim Molyneaux's famous "long game", content that - come victory or defeat for his party next May - it will fall to him in any event?
Will the dissidents call another Ulster Unionist Council meeting or will Mr Trimble pre-empt them and call it himself? And if so, to what end?
Martin McGuinness may be on to something when he questions whether Mr Trimble is prepared to lead his party into the Assembly elections as serving First Minister in the power-sharing Executive. Without evidence of a significant improvement on the ground, some of Mr Trimble's supporters think he should force the crisis and a suspension of the institutions of government rather than await electoral validation for Mr Donaldson and, worse still, Dr Ian Paisley.
After Wednesday, of course, and London's redefinition of its ceasefire requirements, the Provisional IRA has the opportunity to accelerate the transition from terror to democracy and put the Ulster Unionist leader to the test. We shall see. Where the republican leadership is almost certainly wrong is in doubting Mr Trimble's commitment to the Belfast Agreement.
Indeed they might take instruction from his falling-out with the Secretary of State, John Reid. Mr Trimble affects to have won an assurance from Tony Blair denied him by Dr Reid on Wednesday - that, should the British government determine the IRA to be in breach of its ceasefire, the Secretary of State would ask the Assembly to consider a motion excluding Sinn Féin from office.
This latest Trimble manoeuvre is concerned with "the blame game" in circumstances where his position is rendered untenable by a British judgment pointing inevitably to suspension. Suspension, not collapse. Mr Adams and others will have their view about how often this process can be suspended before its remaining credibility ebbs away. The point is that, even as he anticipates his worst-case scenario, Mr Trimble contrives to allow a possible way back.
Moreover - and whatever about the means by which he thinks to do it - we know that Mr Trimble intends to be still in play come the election. For, though barely mentioned in the run-up to Wednesday's events, the UUP leader clearly believes he will win Mr Blair's agreement to hold a Border poll on the same day.
"Close down the debate about Irish unity or risk losing, David." That, just a few months back, was the calculation of his friends as they peered beyond the UUC's annual meeting into an Assembly election year they might have thought to survive rather than win.
The panic reflected the unionist tendency to believe the republican "spin" on the agreement as the transitional route to a united Ireland. They were also being battered by dark hints about the upcoming census and a shrinking Protestant advantage, and by an occasional British poll suggesting it might be time for them to make their final peace with Dublin. Mr Trimble - who doesn't believe any of this - then decided to close down the debate by bringing it to a head with a referendum.
As an exercise in maximising the unionist vote and securing his and his party's position in the next Assembly, the tactic might well work. Seen in a wider perspective, however, Mr Trimble's Big Idea may prove a bad one. As some of his allies concede, the very idea marks a reversal for pro-agreement unionists.
THEIR 1998 referendum pitch was that the agreement secured Northern Ireland's continuance as part of the British state. Five years on next May, politics there will again revolve around the constitutional issue. Also, the pro-Union majority may be smaller than Mr Trimble anticipates.
His predecessor, Jim (now Lord) Molyneaux, used to talk of "the greater number" of people in Northern Ireland incorporating many Roman Catholics with no wish to leave the United Kingdom. Not least because of the performance of the Celtic Tiger, such assumptions may now be wide of the mark. Moreover, the nationalist tail is up: even those with no desire to force the pace on unity might find irresistible Mr Trimble's invitation to maximise their tribal strength.
Third, to call a referendum is a commitment to accept its outcome, even if a bare majority of 51 per cent emerges for unity.
True, the agreement enshrines the principle of consent. Its operational dynamic, however, is rooted in the principle of dual consent by both communities - the triumph of John Hume's insistence that majoritarianism doesn't work in a divided society.
Given the ongoing experience in Northern Ireland, where there is widespread consent for the institutions of government, does anyone really believe a simple majority would be sufficient basis for a change of sovereignty or that a Dublin government would endanger the successful implementation of the agreement on the basis of such a narrow - and potentially reversible - sectarian head count?
The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Cowen, have already shown their thinking on this is well advanced. Asked about the notion that nationalists had simply to outbreed the unionists, Mr Cowen described this fascination with demographics as "politically primitive" - a guarantor of the zero-sum, majoritarian mentality which had served, and would serve, both communities in the North poorly.
Mr Trimble favours a renewed relationship with the British Conservatives. If he can survive the autumn - and next May - he might consider that the most effective coalition for stability in Northern Ireland and between Northern Ireland and the Republic, would be between an Ulster Unionist-led administration in Belfast and a Fianna Fáil government in Dublin.