Northern peace process enters what finally begins to resemble endgame, writes Frank Millar, London Editor
This must be a truly maddening moment for Tony Blair. For few serious politicians or pundits now must doubt his assessment of the dispositions of Ian Paisley and Gerry Adams as the Northern Ireland peace process enters what finally begins to resemble endgame, rather than all-too-familiar "blame game".
The British prime minister is convinced the Sinn Féin president wants, and intends, to "do the right thing" on policing - and that the DUP leader would very much like to end his career as co-equal first minister in a powersharing Executive at Stormont. After all the interminable talk, Mr Blair thinks it would be crazy for either side to retreat now. As his spokesman puts it, "if they do, we shall never know."
Among the serious players as yet unconvinced by Mr Blair, of course, are senior members of what is sometimes referred to as the DUP's "collective leadership". This may in the past have been an amusing concept to an all-powerful Dr Paisley, but it is an extreme irritant now as his seemingly monolithic party battles perceptions of doubt and growing division.
Before members of the leadership rush to complain, this is not to suggest the DUP is about to split, Ulster Unionist-style. Even as they manoeuvre to define/shift/maintain positions, the DUP's elected representatives show remarkable discipline.
"We're like family when all is said and done," explains one of their number: "We're not going to go the way of [ David] Trimble's party."
That said, the attempt to hold Dr Paisley to a defined period in which to "test" Sinn Féin's bona fides - and the resistance to any commitment to a timetable for the devolution of policing powers - has every appearance of being confident and co-ordinated. Former diehard loyalists no longer exhibit quite the same faith in "the Big Man", while some potential successors sense the march of time and suspect him in too much of a hurry to secure a radically-revised "legacy" of his own.
Peter Hain may be right to see a dissident DUP minority as divided between those forever against a deal with republicans and those who would prefer, for a variety of perfectly comprehensible reasons, to carry the moment of decision on to Gordon Brown's watch. And mere "backbenchers" they may be.
However, in a parliamentary party of nine MPs, Nigel Dodds, Gregory Campbell, David Simpson and William McCrea, acting apparently in concert with party chairman Lord Morrow and MEP Jim Allister, represent a significant strand of unionist opinion.
Coalescing around a strict interpretation of stated DUP policy, it seems reasonable to assume this group was at least a factor in preventing the further advance in Dr Paisley's position that Mr Adams and the two governments had hoped to hear over the Christmas period.
Some at the heart of the Paisley project may seek to marginalise Mr Allister and otherwise dismiss all talk of internal dissatisfaction.
However, it would seem an objective fact that Dr Paisley has not arrived as majority leader only to commit the crime of which he accused all unionist leaders before him, namely, dividing the unionist people.
British ministers might also reflect that Mr Blair once thought to cast Dr Paisley, Jeffrey Donaldson (then an anti-Agreement Ulster Unionist) and Robert McCartney into the outer darkness after they persuaded nearly half the unionist electorate to vote 'No' in the 1998 referendum on the Belfast Agreement.
Anyone who thinks completing the DUP transition to power-sharing will be comfortable - or is cavalier about Dr Paisley's need for maximum unity in the next phase of hoped-for political development - could actually undermine the prospect of eventual agreement.
Better then, perhaps, to discard name-calling and abuse, allow Dr Paisley to conduct his own internal debate, and acknowledge that there is much in the current state-of-play to concern even some enthusiasts for a new deal. Better, too, for Downing Street to resist the temptation to liberally interpret Dr Paisley's chosen words or the terms of the policing motion for Sinn Féin's special ardfheis.
Understandably convinced it knows the underlying realities, Number 10 has been seeking to prevent people rushing to opposite (and in its view wrong) conclusions in the aftermath of last Saturday's Sinn Féin ardchomhairle meeting.
However, any perception of an ongoing "spin" operation by them could be wholly counter-productive. It would also seem unnecessary, since cool examination of what has occurred between the St Andrews negotiations and now would suggest that - on the big issue as defined by Dr Paisley - the DUP leader has won an argument on which London and Dublin thought to deny him as recently as last summer.
For sure, the policing motion for the Sinn Féin ardfheis comes laden with conditionality. Unionists may also be offended by the accompanying threat - that if Sinn Féin's terms for restoration of the institutions and the timetable for devolution of policing powers are not met - the republicans with the British will find an alternative "Plan B" way to proceed. The point should not be lost that, even in that context, Sinn Féin's promised commitment is to endorse the PSNI.
And here again it is instructive to know that the DUP leadership is as unimpressed by suggestions that "Plan B" can ever amount to tacit Joint British/Irish Authority, as it is about the much-hyped British/Sinn Féin deal over the relationship between the PSNI and MI5.
Moreover, the widespread perception within the republican community may be that, in real terms, the Adams leadership has already gone through the pain barrier. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, like Mr Blair, certainly appears to anticipate that changes in attitudes to the PSNI will swiftly follow on foot of the ardfheis.
Indeed, Mr Blair's insistence that full support for the police can still facilitate devolution by March 26th might seem to suggest - contrary to the ardfheis motion - that Martin McGuinness will be able to take the pledge of office promising to uphold the rule of law and support the PSNI by that date.
If he cannot (whether because of Sinn Féin's conditions - or because in such circumstances they choose to interpret the pledge itself as conditional) that will not be a problem for Dr Paisley, though it would certainly torpedo Mr Blair's March deadline.
Yet even that - and the possibility that he might have to make good Mr Hain's threat and dissolve the newly-elected Assembly - should not deter Mr Blair now from his chosen course. The fear immediately after St Andrews was that the forthcoming Assembly contest would prove but an election to further the "process". But Mr Blair has ascertained the direction of travel and, though grinding slow, the process has moved on significantly.
Even if interrupted by temporary breakdown on March 26th, the prime minister can calculate that Mr Adams has nowhere else to go and that for Dr Paisley - for whom, unlike Mr Adams, devolution is actually a strategic goal - the question is probably no longer "if", but "when".
In that context it is interesting to note a new DUP calculation that they might, on balance, fare better under Mr Blair than Mr Brown - and that Mr Blair seems intent on staying in office at least until June.