A new page in modern Irish history was turned by Mr Gerry Adams yesterday when he announced that he and Mr Martin McGuinness had put it to the IRA that the peace process could be saved if it could make "a ground-breaking move on the arms issue". The Irish, British and American governments have been teed-up to expect the first act of decommissioning within the next 48 hours which will fall to be verified by General John de Chastelain's Independent International Decommissioning Body. We have reached a defining moment on this island.
But if the most important page in our history books is being written, it is wise to caution that nobody has seen the script. For the sake of the Belfast Agreement and the future of the political institutions under-pinning it, it is to be hoped that the great expectations created by Mr Adams' significant statement in Conway Mill in Belfast will be realised. The actual must meet the verbal now.
It can be presumed that Mr Adams - and Mr McGuinness who is in New York - would not have publicly appealed to the IRA to take an initiative to put arms beyond use for the first time if they did not believe that they could elicit the required response. They addressed part of their remarks to the Republican constituency to alleviate its concerns about such an unprecedented move. "Republicans in Ireland and elsewhere," Mr Adams said, "will have to strategically think this issue through".
A strategic analysis of the political situation in Northern Ireland for some considerable time would confirm that the process has been brought to breaking point by the absence of any decommissioning of paramilitary arms. Republicans may well have signed up to the first IRA cessation in 1994 and the Belfast Agreement in 1998 believing that they could continue the twin-strategy of the ballot and the bullet ad infinitum. Sinn FΘin then signalled in spirit, rather than strictly in letter, that the total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations would take place. The party got into government on foot of a more explicit promise. The whole concept of decommissioning changed on May 6th, 2000, when the IRA made its first direct commitment to put its arms completely and verifiably beyond use. But nothing actually happened.
Many republicans may be angry, the Sinn FΘin president said yesterday, at the "unrelenting focus on silent IRA weapons". It was inevitable. The vote of the people is the only tool to be traded in a democracy and it is earnestly to be hoped that the republican movement has arrived at the judgment that its best interests can be served inside the democratic fold.
A new page in Irish history will be written, one way or another, in the coming days. It would be churlish not to welcome it. But the first positive IRA move on decommissioning must be real and substantial in scale. If it proves to be worth the wait, Mr Adams can be assured that the political establishment, North and South, is poised to give a generous response. Maybe, just maybe, the terrible events of September 11th are the harbinger of some good in this small part of the world.