With the Taoiseach and British Prime Minister due in Hillsborough today, Frank Millar assesses the issuesarising in the peace process
Say what you like about Mr Tony Blair, he certainly doesn't lack in ambition. Some time soon, he is expected to commit Britain to a presently unpopular American-led war with Iraq. Meanwhile he continues aggressively to pursue a final settlement in the Northern Ireland peace process.
That was the task Mr Blair set himself in Belfast last October with his landmark speech demanding "acts of completion". The crunch was the crunch, he declared.
"There is no parallel track left. The fork in the road has finally come. Whatever guarantees we need to give that we will implement the agreement, we will. Whatever commitment to the end we all want to see, of a normalised Northern Ireland, I will make. But we cannot carry on with the IRA half in, half out of this process; not just because it isn't right any more, it won't work any more."
So, no more "groundhog day", he promised; no more "inch-by-inch" negotiation, but "a turning point" and "a moment of choice." As he and the Taoiseach fly in for today's Hillsborough summit, the sense grows that the moment of choice is fast approaching.
By their very presence, Mr Blair and Mr Ahern will fuel speculation that the requested "big steps" might soon be taken, heralding the end of paramilitarism and the full implementation of the Belfast Agreement. Nor are the British seeking to downplay today's event. To the contrary, Whitehall insiders admit that raising expectations at this point is part of the play.
However, they, like Sinn Féin's Mr Martin McGuinness, insist they do not yet know if it is "game on." The dictionary definition above might just prove a handy benchmark by which to assess the rhetoric of prime ministerial pronouncements against the emerging reality.
While Mr Blair could not have been clearer in rejecting another inconclusive trade as the means of restoring the suspended Stormont Assembly, his Belfast speech has been attended by a fairly widespread assumption that that is probably the best he can hope for.
Hence speculative reports about imminent breakthroughs invariably fall short of the original prime ministerial vision, suggesting some form of IRA statement and at least one "act of completion" in the form of a further decommissioning instalment, possibly (though not certainly) to be conducted in full view of the television cameras.
The further assumption - based on an expectation of little more than the patch-and-mend solutions of the past - is that this might be enough to force Mr Blair's hand on the Assembly election scheduled for May and have him turn the screws on David Trimble's Ulster Unionists.
In other words, Mr Blair and Mr Ahern will be followed to Hillsborough by high hopes but also by dreary suspicion in some quarters that the current negotiation might simply produce another variation in the "blame game".
Republicans will be thinking to do enough to secure an election in which they hope to triumph over the SDLP, while keeping their powder dry for the real negotiations which must necessarily await the unpredictable electoral outcome on the unionist side.
Such assumptions are understandable, not least given Mr Blair's own description of the crises which have bedeviled this process since the high point of Good Friday 1998:
"It has been 4½ years of hassle, frustration and messy compromise. After the dawn of the agreement itself, there have been no moments of dazzling light when the decisions are plain, the good and the bad illuminated with crystal certainty, the path clear, the clarion call easy to sound. Each step has been a struggle, each bit of advance ground out."
However, Mr Blair's speech also contained a powerful argument against such a low-grade outcome this time:
"Remove the threat of violence and the peace process is on an unstoppable path. That threat, no matter how damped down, is no longer reinforcing the political, it is actually destroying it. In fact, the continuing existence of the IRA as an active paramilitary organisation is now the best card those whom republicans call rejectionist unionists have in their hand.
"It totally justifies their refusal to share power; it embarrasses moderate unionism and pushes wavering unionists into the hands of those who would just return Northern Ireland to the past and, because it also embarrasses the British and Irish governments, it makes it harder for us to respond to nationalist concerns." Recent accounts of Sinn Féin's approach to the present negotiations might suggest a republican leadership splendidly oblivious to these realities as spelt out by Mr Blair. The party leadership is reportedly anxious to proceed "with or without" Mr Trimble.
Indeed its national chairman, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, suggests a unionist majority might have to be confronted with a more unpalatable plan B should they continue to obstruct the agreement.
However it is hard to divine the logic whereby irritation with Mr Trimble should incline Sinn Féin more enthusiastically to a negotiation with Dr Paisley's DUP. Moreover these indications of a readiness to deal with a "changing" unionist leadership do not square with the privately expressed belief of key republicans that Mr Trimble remains the best bet to secure the Belfast Agreement.
Believing this to be the operative Sinn Féin assessment, the British government's initial inclination was to describe Mr McLoughlin's rhetoric as likely "camouflage" for expected significant movement by the IRA. Yet Whitehall nervousness about republican intentions was reflected in the reiteration by the Secretary of State, Mr Paul Murphy, last Thursday that each side had a veto and that inclusive agreement, by definition, cannot exclude either community.
Significantly, perhaps, that message was subsequently reinforced by Mr Richard Haass, President Bush's special envoy on Northern Ireland. Mr Haass and Mr Murphy also indicated that the grand scale of the original Blair project remains undiminished.
The US administration believes "various parties" are contemplating previously unimaginable steps, which Mr Haass said should "help bring about an end to paramilitary capabilities." Mr Murphy told the Commons everything turned on the "real, total and permanent" cessation of IRA activity.
So, is the IRA ready to stand down or otherwise rule itself out of business - its war over, done with, finished, for good?
Dublin officials fret that even speculation of this kind simply ensures such language will not be forthcoming. Yet the language employed by the British government suggests a redefinition of the IRA cessation to include all those activities - targeting and surveillance, weapons procurement, so-called "punishment" attacks and recruiting - listed by Mr Blair, and that the IRA finds its own language with which to forswear any future recourse to violence.
Unionists, moreover, are unlikely to take assurances of republican good intent on trust. Instead Mr Trimble is likely to find himself burdened with previously discarded UUP demands for a verifiable process of decommissioning, with timetables and schedules enshrined in legislation.
To which add Mr Trimble's own demands for an independent element in the ongoing monitoring of the ceasefires and for "exclusion mechanisms" to be deployed against Sinn Féin in the event of any future republican breach of the commitment to exclusively peaceful means.
For sure, as Sinn Féin frequently reminds us, this cannot be a one-way street. If republican compliance is not quite unimaginable, then it is certain to come at a price across the spectrum of issues from the protection of the institutions of government, demilitarisation and further policing reform, through the entire human rights and equality agendas.
It sounds a pretty tall order - not least in a timescale seemingly dictated by the imperative of holding fresh Assembly elections in barely 12 weeks. Built into every speculative scenario is one compelling reason why republicans might yet choose to stay their hand - the likelihood that Mr Trimble may be unable to reliably commit his party to resume power-sharing even after the election.
It will be fascinating to see how Mr Blair and Mr Adams resolve that dilemma. However Mr Blair has raised incredibly high expectations. By his own account, he expects first and foremost from the republican movement.