The stakes could hardly be higher for Mr David Trimble as he seeks the support of the Ulster Unionist Council for the Northern Ireland peace settlement in Belfast today. After the courageous and ground-breaking risks he took to secure the agreement he must command a strong majority of the delegates if he is to see it delivered through assembly elections and then implemented over the coming year.
A No vote today would put paid to the settlement and endanger peace and stability on this island. Mr Trimble's task will be to convince the meeting that what has been agreed represents the best possible deal for the people his party represents and for the unionism they so cherish. It is a tribute to the agreement he so much helped to broker, that in presenting it positively to his party colleagues he will have the goodwill of all those other parties who contributed to its success and of the communities they represent.
Mr Trimble's opponents within his party have expressed grave concerns about decommissioning, the future of the RUC and the release of prisoners. Tactically, they seek clarification from the British government that Sinn Fein would not be allowed to enter a Northern Ireland government unless arms decommissioning were demonstrably under way, that the RUC's character would not be transformed and that prisoners would not be released to continue campaigns of violence. Mr Trimble has convincing and compelling arguments on all these scores, some of which were articulated yesterday as assurances by the British Prime Minister, Mr Blair, in an interview with the BBC.
But there are strict limits to what can be clarified without unravelling the agreement. Not surprisingly, the main points of criticism arising this week within the Ulster Unionists are directed at precisely those elements of the agreement designed to convince Sinn Fein that it should be accepted. That party's ardfheis in Dublin this weekend faces an equally fateful set of decisions about the agreement - albeit not as starkly defined - while debate continues within their organisation. Both Mr Trimble and Mr Adams know it is not possible to reopen the deal by cherry-picking from its more acceptable elements. Its shortcomings and ambiguities will only be resolved by a long process of building trust and confidence through the revival of proper democratic politics within Northern Ireland and by harnessing and developing its relations with this State and Britain.
The opinion poll in this newspaper showing 73 per cent in favour of the agreement in Northern Ireland provides a hopeful indication that civil society there is ready to give it decisive support. Unless Mr Trimble can muster a roughly equivalent level of support within the Ulster Unionist Council today it will be more difficult for him to demand future loyalty and unity from his critics and to ensure that they do not subvert him by selecting dissident candidates to contest the assembly elections in June. He must avoid the possibility that the largest bloc therein would be a unionist anti-agreement one. His strongest argument today will be to remind delegates of how much a rejection - or, indeed, a call for clarification incapable of implementation - would alienate their fellow-citizens of the United Kingdom. As Mr John Taylor has observed, it would marginalise unionists within its political mainstream for a generation. Last night's murder in west Belfast must serve to remind everyone that the road back to a normal society in Northern Ireland will be strewn with difficulties.