As Drumcree Sunday on July 4th edges ever closer, so the efforts to end the stand-off become more intense. Mr David Trimble met Mr Breandan Mac Cionnaith at Stormont this week and, although there are few figures more prominent in the demonology of hardline unionism than the Garvaghy residents' leader, there was little or no adverse public reaction to the meeting.
Now the Orange Order in Belfast and in counties Down and Tyrone has decided to hold the traditional July 12th parades on home turf rather than at Drumcree as had been suggested. Counties Fermanagh and Derry are expected to adopt a similar course.
While senior Orangemen insisted this did not indicate any lack of solidarity with their protesting brethren at Drumcree, that was not the way it seemed to hardliners on the ground in Portadown.
However most moderate people will heave a sigh of relief as the prospect recedes of 100,000 Orangemen massing for a huge parade at Drumcree, like a reenactment of the Battle of the Boyne. The issue is still expected to come up for consideration by the order's supreme council, the Grand Orange Lodge of Ireland, on June 2nd. There is said to be an element at Grand Lodge level that would still like to see an Orange army march at Drumcree and the lines of authority as between the counties and the Grand Lodge are not entirely clear. Nevertheless, as one senior unionist put it yesterday: "Not having a Belfast Twelfth would be like not having a New Year."
The average Orangeman is a law-abiding citizen who regards the Twelfth as an enjoyable family outing and not a day of protest. The tragic deaths of the three Quinn children at Balllymoney last July, the blast bomb attack which killed RUC man Frankie O'Reilly and the scenes of confrontation with the police at Drumcree bridge have had a distinctly discouraging effect on Orangemen who entertained the idea of displaying solidarity with their Portadown brethren. There is also the matter of keeping traditional and possibly contentious routes open in the various localities, since the eagle eye of the Parades Commission is always watching and that body could decide to ban or reroute the march in question next year.
Mr Mac Cionnaith led a delegation to meet the Taoiseach yesterday and on Monday he and other elected politicians, both unionist and nationalist, are scheduled to attend a further meeting at Craigavon under the chairmanship of Mr Trimble.
Last night, the First Minister-designate proposed the aim of having summers which passed off "like they used to". Observers believe if he could successfully broker a deal on Drumcree it would not only be a coup for him personally but would greatly improve the political climate in the peace process and in Northern Ireland generally.
Several observers of the Drumcree standoff have described it as an albatross around the people's neck. There has been scant information on how any deal would be structured but there has been some speculation about permitting and banning marches on an on-again off-again basis. There are also persistent reports of a sizeable financial package being prepared to help tackle social ills and deprivation among both communities in Portadown.
Despite the suspicions voiced by a number of Orangemen, there is no evidence of any direct trade-off involving decommissioning and the Drumcree issue. But the fact that the mediator, Mr Frank Blair, - no relation of the Prime Minister's - was brought into Downing Street for a meeting during a recent session of round-table talks indicates that solving Drumcree is a central element of current peace efforts.
While ending the stand-off and brokering a peaceful solution would in all likelihood leave the weapons issue unresolved, there is widespread agreement that it would remove a major irritation from the body politic and could make it significantly easier to break the impasse on arms.
The two governments have now accepted that there will be no decommissioning in the immediate future and current thinking is focused on devising some other type of concession to offer Mr Trimble so that he could be persuaded to go ahead and form an executive that included Sinn Fein. The consensus at present is that Mr Trimble is unlikely to take many political risks this side of the European elections which could finally scupper the chances of his party's candidate, Mr Jim Nicholson.
The two prime ministers will kick off this morning's deliberations at Downing Street with a half-hour private meeting. Meetings will then take place with the UUP, SDLP and Sinn Fein. A bilateral meeting between the Unionists and Sinn Fein last time aroused considerable optimism which, in the nature of the peace process, quickly flagged but there is hope that another such encounter today might pay dividends.
There were indications during the week of a lack of enthusiasm on Downing Street's part for a further futile round of meetings and it was noteworthy that the announcement of today's session came via Dublin. Some observers feel the prime ministers have a negative effect on the process because they always have to worry about their image and not being seen to come out of the conference chamber empty-handed - what might be called the Hillsborough syndrome.