Northern Ireland politics is glacial but the governments and even some in the DUP insist there could be movement by autumn or winter, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor.
Northern Ireland is going through a wearisome period of phoney politics at the moment but, as Dublin and London exhort, people must have faith and patience because they foresee light at the end of the tunnel. A colleague once said that if Northern politicians ever glimpsed this light "they'd buy more tunnel" but nonetheless the governments are sticking by their game plan. And there is a logic to it. Ian Paisley and his unionist constituency aren't yet ready to do a deal with Sinn Féin to form a proper government in Northern Ireland, but by the November 24th deadline for restoring devolution who knows what might happen?
In the meantime there is Northern Secretary Peter Hain's "virtual" Assembly which, the theory runs, gives MLAs something to do. Furthermore, after two weeks of arcane wrangling the "preparation for government" Assembly committee was finally formed which, usefully, will bring Sinn Féin and DUP politicians face to face in a small room.
Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern will arrive at the end of June to provide stimulus and perhaps some ideas for the politicians to chew on through the summer recess.
The hope is that the report of Independent Monitoring Commission in October will deliver stronger proof that the IRA is eschewing criminality and paramilitarism, and that the following month Dr Paisley will indicate he is prepared to do business with Gerry Adams.
Maybe not specifically by November 24th - the deadline for a deal set by the governments - but at least if there is by then a declaration of intent or an agreement in principle by the DUP to share power with Sinn Féin, then politics could loosen up in the new year. That's the plan, and it's not a bad one if everybody plays to the script. But this week there was a real danger of this November 24th project descending into farce. Consider this for example. At 5pm on Thursday I got a phone call from a Northern Ireland Office (NIO) spokesman to say that Mr Hain had decided the Assembly would not sit next week.
I strolled over to City Hall to cover the election of SDLP councillor Pat McCarthy as the new Belfast lord mayor. Mr McCarthy is a former Workers' Party member who was interned in the 1970s as an alleged Official IRA member, so things do change. In the hall I was chatting to the DUP's Nigel Dodds who said that his boss Dr Paisley was about to issue a statement threatening to boycott the preparation for government committee if the Assembly did not sit next week.
I returned to the office after the election and lo and behold there were two e-mails from Dr Paisley.
One at 5.16pm warning of the boycott, the other at 5.43pm saying he was now happy he had received a personal assurance from Mr Hain that the Assembly would sit after all. Just then a call came through from another NIO spokesman confirming the Assembly would convene. Some way to run a country, I put it to him.
"Don't be so cynical," he said, "this shows that we do listen to politicians." What he meant, I think, is that Mr Hain listens to Dr Paisley because he's the politician who will determine whether or not there ever will be a deal. "The important thing is that Ian Paisley is still in the process. He has to make his move, but he needs more time," said one senior London source.
It's all deeply uninspiring stuff. The great Northern public are switched off from politics, and who could blame them. But, as politicians and the public endure this political purgatory in the hope of the promised land of restored devolution, one DUP source insisted by the autumn or winter there could be real progress.
"Be patient," he counselled.