Analysis: David Trimble appeared to lose the "blame game" on Tuesday, writes Frank Millar, London Editor
What on earth went wrong? Was David Trimble stitched up? Or did he sell himself short once again to the superior negotiators on the Sinn Féin side? Can he credibly reassemble the fragments of Tuesday's carefully planned choreography and again proclaim a bigger day than Good Friday 1998 - even assuming the Provisional IRA allows him the required transparency about its latest act of decommissioning?
Would this be enough? Why would he want to? And if he does, how can he think to win the election? These were the questions tormenting pro-agreement unionists yesterday as they surveyed the wreckage from Tuesday's crash, wondering whether the peace train could be put back on track.
This line of questioning was also proving painful for non-unionist democrats throughout the island of Ireland who were equally anxious, as yesterday's editorial in this newspaper put it, to see the IRA locked into a decommissioning process "which would make parliamentary, rather than paramilitary, activity the universal leveller in Irish politics".
For even before Mr Trimble's explosive response to Gen de Chastelain's report, it was clear that the Sinn Féin and IRA statements hammered out during tortuous negotiations had failed to do this - at any rate in the explicit terms that literal-minded people throughout these islands had been encouraged to expect from their governments.
The immediate focus was inevitably on the how and why of the debacle. The Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, together with the Ulster Unionist leader, faced searching and embarrassing questions about their conduct of this negotiation with Sinn Féin and the IRA. Those questions were made still more urgent by the Taoiseach's disclosure that he had been reluctant to travel to Belfast knowing that the transparency question remained unresolved.
We now know that Gen de Chastelain was incommunicado, presumably at the insistence of the IRA, as he travelled to the designated location for the decommissioning event. But why - if Mr Ahern and Mr Blair had been unable to pin down the terms in which the event should be described - did they proceed as planned with Tuesday's 7 a.m. announcement that the election was set for November 26th?
There was no statutory pressure to meet the election date, and Tuesday could easily have given way to Wednesday if time was needed to establish the all-important transparency on which Mr Trimble would finally base his decision.
One conspiracy theory doing the rounds yesterday was that the IRA might have deliberately kept the general out of contact until late Tuesday morning, knowing the election date would be out by then and calculating that there could be no going back for Mr Blair.
Sinn Féin and the IRA clearly also have questions to answer; principally why, in word and deed, they failed to deliver the minimum necessary to give Mr Trimble a fair wind going into the election.
However tempting some may find it, this theory doesn't stand up. Mr Gerry Adams asserted categorically at Hillsborough on Tuesday night that "we had a deal", and Mr Trimble decided to attack the general over his decommissioning commentary rather than Sinn Féin (by reference to its shortcomings against Mr Blair's original "acts of completion" demand).
Likewise, while clearly frustrated by its inability to detail what it considers a highly significant decommissioning act, the British government has not accused the republicans of bad faith. The Taoiseach, meanwhile, appeared impatient with Mr Trimble's latest problem, bluntly telling Mr Blair "it's not so easy, Tony" as he observed that the IRA had acted in accordance with the established decommissioning procedures.
Pressed on these matters yesterday, one Whitehall source seemed to suggest there was little to explain, that the whole enterprise was sequenced and conditional and that, upon finding the general and the IRA had not delivered to his satisfaction, Mr Trimble had exercised his right and pushed the stop button.
Which is all very well, except that in the process Mr Trimble appeared to lose the "blame game" and both governments ended up looking extremely foolish.
For, astonishingly, Mr Blair, and Mr Ahern, too, agreed to designate Tuesday as "history" day without knowing the details of the third decommissioning act or having (apparently) the slightest intimation of the timetable for the promised process to put all weapons beyond use.
The official explanation on offer is that "we never do know what they're (the IRA) going to do until they do it".
However, the point was that this was not meant to be a repeat performance. Mr Trimble had told republicans that if they were going to decommission as before they could save themselves the trouble because it would not work for a sceptical unionist electorate.
More importantly, it was the British Prime Minister who insisted the IRA could no longer be "half in, half out" of this process when he suspended the Assembly last October.
In April this year Mr Blair again outraged nationalists and republicans when he refused an election for want of a satisfactory answer to this question: "Will the IRA end all paramilitary activity?" Mr Adams protested at the time that the IRA's statement was one of completely peaceful intent, its logic "that there should be no activities inconsistent with this".
Yet in response, Mr Blair's spokesman demanded to know "if the \ statement means punishment beatings, exiling, arms procurement and development, intelligence gathering and targeting are at and end".
Hence the expectation that Mr Blair would demand explicit assurances to this effect before allowing the election to proceed.
In fairness, Mr Blair and Mr Ahern believe this is what they have got, and that the IRA's endorsement of Mr Adams's position is an implicit confirmation that the full range of paramilitary activities defined in paragraph 13 of the British-Irish Joint Declaration will now cease.
Moreover, both governments place great stress on the role of the Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) in holding the IRA and other paramilitaries to future account.
Unfortunately, Mr Adams has described the creation of the IMC itself as a breach of the Belfast Agreement.
In addition, some sceptics point out that the IRA statement welcoming Mr Adams's speech "in which he accurately reflects our position" does not necessarily mean that the Sinn Féin president has "fully reflected" their position.
The curiosity certainly will not be lost on unionist voters that, while Mr Trimble had warm things to say about Mr Adams's statement, the leaders of the SDLP and Alliance Party still detect ambiguity in the republican commitment.
On what Mr Blair likes to call a "big picture" read-out, the republican movement clearly has moved significantly beyond its position of last April. And students of the process can see why Mr Trimble believes Mr Adams is intent on bringing physical force republicanism to an end.
Unfortunately it is all still cast in language comprehensible only to the students and afficionados of the process, and is contingent on still more of the process on which Mr Trimble embarked 5½ years ago. The bitter irony will be that, if Mr Trimble really has brought the IRA to the point of no return, the unionist electorate may entrust others to keep it there.