The little village of Hillsborough has been besieged by outside broadcasting vans and journalists with mobile phones, as well as protesters who want no hand, act or part in the Belfast Agreement.
Will the IRA's Easter statement, more conciliatory than usual this year, be enough to allow the unionists and Sinn Fein to find a way round the hurdle of decommissioning? Will Mo Mowlam be able to trigger the d'Hondt mechanism and set up a power-sharing executive at Stormont today?
What will it mean if talks are adjourned and the agreement has to be "parked" for days, even weeks?
The body language of those involved, the careful and restrained tone of their public statements, indicate the main participants want to make progress. In this they reflect the desire of the overwhelming majority of those they represent.
Out of the spotlight, the hard work of securing the peace continues. Men and women try to understand that the experiences of other people living in this small society have been very different from their own, and that the process of building trust will take many years.
ON Tuesday night I watched this process in action. As the two prime ministers struggled with the choreography of decommissioning, I left Hillsborough to attend a meeting of the Independent Police Commission in Belfast. As Chris Patten told the audience, the commission is in existence only because people voted for it in a referendum last May. Despite their misgivings about some aspects of the Belfast Agreement they wanted - and still desperately hope - that the peace can work.
There were about 150 people in the Whitla Hall. Twenty-seven spoke. Several of those present apologised for the "poor turnout" although, by the standards of most political meetings, this was a good crowd.
It was a civilised discussion. There were deep feelings but little of the passionate anger which has sometimes erupted at meetings of the commission in republican and loyalist areas.
Many in the audience were retired professional people and expected their views to be taken seriously. Several told Chris Patten that he should understand that in Northern Ireland ordinary, decent citizens do not go to public meetings. In fact, after a rather reluctant start, an extremely wide range of views was expressed, varying from those who saw the whole exercise as part of an ongoing plot "to bribe and placate terrorists" right through to those who accepted the need for radical reform of the RUC.
One man caught the prevailing mood very well. He said: "I'm part of the flailing around in the middle, desperately wanting the peace to work, hoping the two prime ministers can come up with something, listening to the news reports each evening." He wanted to see an unarmed police force but could not envisage how this would be possible as long as the paramilitary groups held on to their weapons.
On the other side, of course, the reverse argument applies. Many nationalists do not want the IRA to hand over its guns until they are assured that there is a police service they can trust.
Some members of the audience were there to defend, very firmly, the RUC and to warn members of the Independent Commission to ignore the propaganda campaign that is being waged against it. But others - mainly women, I noticed - pleaded for a greater understanding that the community in Northern Ireland has been split down the middle by very different experiences and that, if there is to be progress, each side must try to understand how this has shaped the other's attitudes.
One woman said: "I've never had a bad experience with a police officer. But I have to accept that this is not true of very many people, to listen to what they tell me and accept it in good faith." Another added: "When we hear stories from `the other side', we have no point of reference to judge whether they are true or not. But if we are ever to make progress I think we have to believe that what they are saying is true."
It is an aspiration which we have to apply to the process of implementing the Good Friday agreement. It does require a real effort to accept that what the other side is saying is not mere propaganda, but rooted in experience. Sinn Fein points to the events of recent weeks - the murder of Rosemary Nelson, the suspicions of police collusion, the attacks on Catholic homes - and asks, quite reasonably, how it can expect the IRA to surrender its arms.
But unionists feel, equally strongly, that for the IRA to hold on to weapons involves the threat of a return to violence at some future date. A courageous leap of faith is needed for each to understand that the other's point of view is both reasonable and genuinely felt.
We keep being told that the silent majority of ordinary, decent people do not go to public meetings or, if they attend, do not speak. There have been 40 meetings of the Independent Police Commission attended by about 12,000 people. One thousand of these have spoken, and several thousand more have filled in the forms which are left on each chair.
Often these meetings have been extremely angry but, as Chris Patten himself remarked, it would be quite wrong to dismiss them as "packed". People have a right to give their account of what has happened to them, express their views. That is what democracy is about.
These meetings have also shown that there is a great need for the victims of violence to tell their stories. They are an integral part of the dialogue which the community in Northern Ireland has been having with itself since the Good Friday agreement was signed just one year ago.
We should by now have grown out of our desire for instant solutions. Whatever Chris Patten and his colleagues say in their report, it will take a long time to build a police force in Northern Ireland capable of commanding confidence right across the community. The wounds of the past go too deep for that.
The same is true of the political structures. We have made great advances in the past year, of which the greatest is probably the common resolve to overcome our problems together. But even if we do get an executive today, we have still a long way to go before we achieve the aims to which the parties pledged themselves last Good Friday: "the achievement of reconciliation, tolerance and mutual trust."