On Monday Westminster rushed through legislation so that Assembly elections in the North can be called at short notice. It was a small victory for the Irish Government, which can't support suspension for constitutional reasons.
There is another sound reason for objecting to suspension, apart from the obvious one that suspension is undemocratic. Quite simply, suspension guarantees that there will be no movement whatsoever on decommissioning.
Progress may have been slow and unsatisfactory for unionists, but it has only occurred according to the terms laid down in the Good Friday agreement, namely, "in the context of the implementation of the overall settlement". Few seemed to notice that the IRA, not a party to the agreement, signed up to that part of the agreement in their statement of May 6th, 2000.
Elections, of course, do not guarantee the agreement will be implemented. Unionist obstruction and prevarication delayed devolution for nearly 18 months after the Assembly elections in 1998. Nor will elections solve what is essentially the most intractable problem in the agreement: unionists' unwillingness to accept rapid and radical change in the North.
No one can force David Trimble, or any other unionist, to preside over arrangements designed to dismantle and remove the special position of unionism in the Northern state. Fundamentally that is what the Good Friday agreement means and requires.
Bringing in legislation for an election, though welcome, does not imply that the British government has suddenly accepted that democratic norms should apply in the North or that the Northern Ireland Office has acquired new respect for Bunreacht na hEireann. Unfortunately, it suggests that the British believe the latest attempt to persuade unionists to implement the agreement, the eagerly awaited jointly wrapped package, will fail.
It is likely to fail because it has to stick to the terms of the agreement: therefore decommissioning will be left in the charge of Gen de Chastelain. Accordingly, there will be no requirement for the IRA to decommission before the August 12th deadline for election of First and Deputy First Ministers. Nor will they do so. Besides, the decommissioning legislation does not oblige them to hand over weapons, a small point seldom mentioned.
Nevertheless, the Ulster Unionist Party, shaken by the results of the Westminster election, in which they lost three seats, two to the DUP, will not accept an anticipated promise by the IRA to render a couple of arms dumps "verifiably unusable". Inevitable concessions in the package from the British to nationalists on policing and - three years late - a programme of demilitarisation will ensure Trimble declines to stand for office in August.
What then? Elections are the only option. The package Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair are concocting would be the issue in those elections. After elections another attempt will be made to form an executive.
Those opposed to elections immediately protest that the DUP would overrun the UUP and make devolution impossible. That is to ignore the movement in the DUP during the Westminster elections when the message on the doorstep led them to modify their outright opposition to partnership in the Assembly.
The alternative is unfolding on the streets at present with the worst communal violence since 1996 as nightly battles rage at interfaces in Belfast.
The UDA has withdrawn its support from the agreement, making official what has been known for months. UDA units have been responsible for hundreds of random pipe-bomb and petrol-bomb attacks on Catholic homes east of the Bann this year. Using one of their noms de guerre, the Red Hand Defenders, they have committed sectarian murder. When did anyone last ask for loyalist decommissioning?
In such conditions, suspension of the agreement's institutions would be tantamount to the deliberate creation of a political vacuum. To do so would be a dereliction of duty. Only the British government contemplates it. It would mean a return to pro-consular direct rule with no strategy. It would convince republicans that no British government will defend any arrangement unionists refuse to operate and that not only can unionists dictate the pace of change, but whether there will be change at all.
Suspension would also ignore the extraordinary fact that not one of the members of the Assembly has demanded the abolition of that institution or its suspension. Unionists may not like the way it works or the number of seats and ministers Sinn Fein has, but they don't want it to go - which is what will happen if there are no elections after August 12th.
The pro-agreement parties say they don't want elections. Which party does? Nonetheless, elections provide them with the only chance to sit around a table afterwards and hammer out a new basis for administration.
The two governments claim the parties will receive the package on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. Perhaps. If Sinn Fein and the UUP leave it, then the two inveterate fudgers, Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair, face a make-or-break decision. Neither of them is good at that, but an election in a democracy is the only choice.
Brian Feeney is a columnist with the Irish News
Mary Holland is on leave