Rather improbably, two walks in two stately gardens in England and Northern Ireland helped save this process. The first wooing started in the beautiful grounds of Weston Park, the stately pile in middle England on which P G Wodehouse modelled his Blandings Castle. And in this tricky courtship, Bertie Ahern - rather than Bertie Wooster - and Tony Blair and Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness were the main characters.

It was the week of the Twelfth this year, an ominously rain and wind-lashed time, when all the pro-agreement parties and the Taoiseach and British Prime Minister trooped to Weston Park to search for a formula that would rescue and revitalise the virtually moribund Belfast Agreement.

It was shortly after David Trimble had resigned as First Minister to try to force the pace on decommissioning. Nobody was predicting miracles but there was some expectation because while the head of the decommissioning body Gen John de Chastelain was supposed to be on holidays he was spotted in Ireland at this period.

From Monday through to Saturday, when we were briefly admitted, reporters were locked outside the huge estate trying to find their way through the news blackout that, for once, politicians were generally observing. On particularly barren days some of us were restricted to filing stories based on whether the home was in Staffordshire or Shropshire. It was in both, we think.

But work was being done. There was progress on demilitarisation, on policing, and on safeguarding the institutions of the Belfast Agreement. But, we were told, the large Sinn FΘin delegation wouldn't even discuss the matter of IRA arms.

"Nothing to do with us, ask the IRA," said the great modern republican leaders Mr Adams, Mr McGuinness, Pat Doherty and Gerry Kelly, when they condescended to speak to journalists at the entrance to Weston Park. With straight faces they innocently queried why we felt they might have some insight into IRA thinking.

Yet, the issue was being addressed out in the gardens where the Taoiseach, Prime Minister and the two Sinn FΘin leaders went strolling at the end of that long week. "We knew there was a chance of a deal when Bertie and Tony and Martin and Gerry went for walks together," explained one party to those talks.

This was important, as an Irish official elaborated. "When Sinn FΘin delegations come in strength to Government Buildings trailing a couple of Dβil candidates for Dublin South West or Kerry North with them for the photo opportunities, then you know there is feck-all doing. But when it's just Gerry and Martin you know it's serious."

The week concluded without a deal but with the whiff of a deal. Word was filtering through that there were real possibilities. After Weston Park the Taoiseach and Prime Minister said they would put a set of proposals together covering all the main issues, and that they would subsequently present them to the parties as a "take it or leave it" document. "The negotiations were over," they declared.

Mr Ahern and Mr Blair at that stage firmly believed they had an understanding that the IRA would respond by deed and not just words on arms, according to good sources.

Two weeks later the product of Weston Park, a 10-page document, was handed out to reporters outside Hillsborough Castle. A colleague from an English newspaper on first reading through the paper exclaimed: "My God, is this the British Army getting out of Northern Ireland?"

Indeed, it was a very green affair. Only one paragraph referred to decommissioning. It said that all parties recognised that putting arms beyond use was an "indispensable part of implementing the Good Friday agreement". Not a lot there for unionists.

Otherwise it was mainly about rolling demilitarisation, radically reducing British troop levels, police reform, ensuring that David Trimble could no longer bar Sinn FΘin ministers attending North-South meetings, and an amnesty for IRA members on the run - issues that are now being put into practice.

For the next five days, Northern Ireland was, as it often is, a rumour mill. The IRA was on the verge of making a dramatic gesture was the word on the grapevine. Then on Monday August 6th Gen de Chastelain's decommissioning body reported that it had agreed with the IRA how arms would be disposed of, but there was no time-frame for when this would occur.

Unionists were sceptical but the Taoiseach and British Prime Minister, based on their Weston Park perambulations, believed the best was yet to come, and quickly. Mr Ahern said in his elliptical style that "hopefully over the next number of days perhaps the outstanding issue of the commencement of that process (decommissioning) will also move on . . ."

It didn't happen. David Trimble may have pre-empted events somewhat by the following day repeating that unionists needed the when of decommissioning, not just the how. What the IRA was offering was not enough, he said.

This was a massive blunder, Martin McGuinness immediately responded, seizing on another opportunity to bemoan unionist intransigence. "What David Trimble has done in rejecting the determination of the IICD is the greatest mistake of all."

At the time Dublin and London put the blame primarily on the shoulders of Sinn FΘin and the IRA, although they were also annoyed at Mr Trimble's "niggardly" response.

It was a bleak period. The British and Irish leaders were disillusioned. "We've been let down, and we're pissed off," was how one disappointed official expressed it. It seemed all pretty hopeless, a mood that was translating itself to the general populace.

Mr Trimble, whose temperament was swinging from despair to angry volatility, decided to go on holidays. "Typical bloody Trimble" was the refrain of that week. More worryingly, it was also emerging that while heading to Austria he would withdraw his three ministers from the Executive. One of his bag carriers was entrusted with the letters of resignation while he was away.

The Northern Secretary, John Reid, believed he had run out of options. He was planning a long suspension and review of the Belfast Agreement. As a prelude to this he did a round of the parties and was amazed to learn, at what he understood was a very routine encounter with the SDLP, that there was a possibility of a shift on the policing issue.

On the Friday before Dr Reid was to announce the suspension he and Seamus Mallon went strolling in the grounds of Hillsborough Castle. They smoked and chatted for an hour. This was quid quo pro politics. If the SDLP delivered, Mr Mallon wanted assurances that the British government wouldn't leave the party exposed by further kowtowing to Sinn FΘin, over and above what was in Weston Park.

The upshot was that the SDLP signed up to the police package with the Catholic Church and the Irish Government providing cover.

Dr Reid could hardly believe it but the next hurdle was to track Mr Trimble before the resignations were executed. It was a frantic and difficult business but eventually he was traced to a service station somewhere in France. Mr Trimble was still in a trough of despond but he reluctantly agreed to at least test whether Mr Mallon could and would deliver, as he did.

On Saturday August 11th Dr Reid announced that as and from that midnight the institutions would be suspended, but only for a day. He granted the agreement another six weeks' lifeline.

"Colombia and September 11th were crucial but no one should under-estimate the importance of Mallon's intervention," explained a senior insider. "If the SDLP hadn't endorsed the policing proposals Trimble would have thrown in the towel. If the middle ground of the SDLP and Ulster Unionism couldn't work together he knew that irrespective of what the IRA did the whole enterprise was doomed."

What was curious here is that Mr Trimble was convinced that the IRA would eventually deliver - but only at a time that would strategically suit republicans and that most likely would be too late for his leadership and possibly too late for the agreement itself. Cynics wondered was the strategy to hold off until prior to the Dβil general election next year in the hope that this would maximise electoral support for the Sinn FΘin candidates.

But then in mid-August came details of the arrests of the three republicans in Colombia. That was embarrassing for Sinn FΘin but it was as nothing compared to the impact of the attacks on the World Trade Centre on September 11th.

"Everything changed on September 11th, and Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness knew it, and they knew it quicker than anybody else," said one well-placed observer.

Using the same cunning and energy that has won them so much electoral gain in recent years, Adams and McGuinness set about redeeming republicanism in the eyes of the world. Adams travelled to South Africa at the end of September where he met Nelson Mandela. There were reports that Mr Mandela strongly advised the Sinn FΘin president that republicans were duty bound to move on arms in order to save the political agreement.

Whether correct or not the notion of a statesman of the stature of Mandela urging such action would obviously play well among republicans back in Ireland. This was Adams building cover for what increasingly seemed inevitable. In Johannesburg he said that despite all the pessimism he was confident the agreement could be rescued.

By this time Dr Reid had again temporarily suspended and then restored the Assembly for another six weeks, ending next Saturday November 3rd. In early October Mr Trimble, who can be pretty cunning himself, began a protracted process where in the absence of decommissioning he warned that his three ministers would resign from the Executive.

He succeeded in buying the guts of three weeks to allow an opportunity for movement. Here was the elusive Mr Trimble. One day he was somewhere in the US, another day he is at the Tory conference. Some in his party were confused or angered by his strategy but they couldn't corner him to make known their feelings.

Why did he take such a chance? "Because he knew then the IRA was going to decommission, and quick" said one confidant. "I don't know whether he knew because Gerry Adams told him or whether he just knew it in his bones, but he knew."

And just think back to these recent weeks. David Trimble never looked happier.

Mr Adams held secret talks with Mr Trimble on at least two occasions in the past three weeks. A useful and confidential line of communication was opened up between the two parties.

The Sinn FΘin leadership required certainty that if the IRA moved that the response from the British and Irish governments would be generous and, in the particular case of the Ulster Unionists, sensitive. Any dangerous talk of IRA surrender or a unionist refusal to grasp what was on offer when the time came would be disastrous, they warned.

Moreover, Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness were getting antsy about some reports citing security sources that the IRA had agreed to decommission. If decommissioning was to happen it had to be seen happening according to the direction of the IRA, nobody else.

They complained to Dr Reid about British "securocrats" trying to wreck the process. Dr Reid - this probably a first for a Northern Secretary - appeared to agree with the two Sinn FΘin heavyweights. He complained about "mischievous" security leaks that always appeared to arise at times of such opportunity.

A little mischievously himself, he privately reminded Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness that they had their own "securocrats" - the republican hardliners who opposed any move on arms.

It does seem purely coincidental, although important, that around this time there was a reshuffle in the IRA leadership with those same securocrats marginalised.

And so, astonishingly, it came to pass. On Monday this week Mr Adams delivered what, in anyone's terms, was a historic speech in Conway Mill in west Belfast, heralding what was announced by the IRA the following day. In a memorable and electric speech he urged all republicans, Sinn FΘiners and IRA volunteers, to hold together.

About 100 activists were briefed in Conway Mill before his speech and, equally amazingly, there were no murmurs of dissent in the room. The republican movement had travelled a long, long journey in 30 years.

Mr Trimble and his senior colleagues were extremely careful in their responses, a fact that was publicly acknowledged by Adams and McGuinness.

There was one potential glitch when in the House of Commons on Wednesday Trimble suggested sanctions against Sinn FΘin if the IRA did not fully decommission by February.

But by Thursday he retreated from this position, returning to his more measured approach. The general pro-agreement hope is that today at his executive council meeting he won't, under pressure from the Donaldson/Burnside wing of Ulster Unionism, reintroduce this potential tripwire.

There are more difficult days ahead, of course. As Mr Adams has said, this is a "battle a day" political process. Yet, three months ago just before a seminal walk in Weston Park the Belfast Agreement appeared on its last legs.

Today it has energy.