"What difference does it make to YOU if decommissioning takes place or not? Which is more important to you: maintaining your position on decommissioning or having the executive appointed? If it is decommissioning, will all the pain and sacrifices that many endured to win the Agreement go to waste? Have you thought out what will happen if the Agreement fails? Can you see other ways of reaching agreement in Northern Ireland?"
These are just a few of the trenchant questions which were put to the readers of the Belfast Newsletter and the Irish News on Monday. They were drawn up by a group of community workers - i.e. people in close touch with fears and emotions at grassroots level - on both sides of the sectarian divide.
Nationalists and unionists were asked to look again at their own cherished positions, to consider how the fears of the other side might be well-founded and legitimate and, crucially, whether they really want the Belfast Agreement to collapse on the thorny problem of which should come first - the hand-over of weapons by the IRA or the formation of an executive that would include seats for Sinn Fein.
One of the most encouraging developments of recent years in Northern Ireland has been the way these two newspapers, each representing mainly one community, have found ways of working together at particularly difficult moments in the peace process, for example during Drumcree and after the Omagh bomb.
Now, once again, they have devoted space to challenging members of each community to consider how the current problems look from the other side, and to be grateful for the progress already made on issues which once seemed so intractable - the setting up of the Assembly, the release of prisoners. Even the formation of North-South bodies is going to be resolved, and probably sooner rather than later.
At the heart of the argument put by the group of community workers is the fact that the participation of the leaders of both communities is absolutely essential if the peace process is to succeed. During the past week we have heard bitter accusations from unionist and nationalist politicians that the other side is deliberately delaying progress. It has been said that David Trimble has failed to prepare his own Assembly members for the compromises that will have to be made and, because of this, has been forced to renege on a deal that had been agreed with Tony Blair.
Unionists ask, with an equal degree of recrimination, why Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are adamant on the IRA's refusal to decommission its arms. But what would happen if the pace were forced, if David Trimble did agree to serve on an executive with Sinn Fein and was then toppled by his own party?
On the other hand, consider the consequences if the IRA did agree to hand over a token amount of explosives and this precipitated a split in the republican movement, as security sources believe could easily happen.
We all know these are the hard realities Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair will have to consider when they meet in Vienna this weekend. It is salutary to have them spelt out in a way which may concentrate minds in the broader community. If the shape of the new executive and the number of cross- Border institutions can be agreed, so much the better. But what is far more important now is that the leaders of the main unionist and nationalist parties should be seen to be working closely together on a joint project, rather than sniping at each other across the old, familiar trenches.
It is quite unacceptable at this stage of the peace process that Seamus Mallon should be standing on the steps of Government Buildings in Dublin complaining that the UUP won't talk to the SDLP, while at the same time John Taylor is telling correspondents in Downing Street that the difficulties over North-South bodies could be "sorted out" in a matter of days, if only the SDLP would sit down and discuss the outstanding problems.
These are images more suitable to an adolescent tiff than to the deliberations of grown men, let alone to a political dialogue which has the noble aim of laying to rest a quarrel which has cost over 3,000 lives and caused untold suffering in the past 30 years.
The real challenge to those involved in the peace process is to understand the problems facing their opponents and how best to help overcome them. In recent days there has, understandably, been a great deal of emphasis laid on the need to get an immediate resolution of the arguments over the executive and cross-Border bodies.
Bertie Ahern has said it would be "an awful mistake" to allow any slippage which might mean missing the Christmas deadline for the setting up of new institutions. But deadlines have been missed before in this process and sometimes this slippage has been necessary to allow one or both sides sufficient time and space to manoeuvre.
David Trimble has made it clear since his party conference in October that he will have to play this pivotal stage of the formation of an executive and the setting-up of North-South bodies very carefully, if he is to retain the support of his party. Gerry Adams needs to show progress can be made if there is to be any hope of the IRA making the longed-for move on decommissioning. All the parties involved knew the meshing of these conflicting objectives was always going to be extremely difficult, which is why a show of joint determination to overcome the problems is so important.
This makes today's ceremony in Oslo, when the Nobel Prize for Peace will be presented to John Hume and David Trimble, an event of great symbolic significance. When he heard of the award the unionist leader expressed the hope that it would not be "premature" but he knows very well that, whatever the difficulties, there can be no turning back from the process on which he has embarked.
The ceremony will serve to remind us all, but particularly the political parties in Northern Ireland, of the scale of what is at stake here, of how much has been achieved since the signing of the agreement and how great is the prize of a secure peace which has still to be achieved.