There can only have been one motivation in the booby-trap bombing which took the life of Mr David Caldwell, a Protestant construction worker, at a Territorial Army base in Derry on Thursday. The aim was to inflame sectarian hatreds, to continue the cycle of violence and, ultimately, to bring down the Belfast Agreement.
True to form, Loyalist paramilitaries declared they would make a "military response." Even now, the death squads are very likely considering who their next victim may be.
The people who rigged the bomb in a lunch-box no doubt would describe Mr Caldwell as a "legitimate target" and the TA base as a "military target." This is casuistry. By definition, the personnel at the base are local and overwhelmingly Protestant. This is simple sectarian assassination and must be seen as such.
Dr John Reid, the Secretary of State, has been measured and precise in his condemnation of Mr Caldwell's murder, which he bracketed with the murder of a 19 year-old Catholic man in North Belfast 10 days ago. These are the actions of extremists in both Loyalist and Republican camps, he declared, while calling on those involved to put an end to violence.
The Secretary of State knows that he is directing his words to people who are effectively beyond appeal and probably beyond rational argument. In spite of the overwhelming vote of the people of this island in favour of the peaceful and constitutional pathway marked out in the Belfast Agreement, minorities on both sides still cling to the gun and the bomb. Not even the carnage and the waste of human life at Omagh has persuaded these elements that there must be an end to warfare.
Nor will they be responsive to public expressions of revulsion or condemnation. Yesterday some thousands of people assembled in the centre of Belfast to express their support for the Agreement and their abhorrence of sectarian violence. It is important that such expressions of support for peace should take place - as it is important that Dr Reid should speak as he did. But the sectarian assassins are a law unto themselves. Neither the will of the people as expressed at the ballot box nor the voices of political authority will deflect them.
At bedrock, this comes to an issue of security and policing. Ultimately the people who will kill a young man because he wears a Celtic jersey or who will put a bomb in a workman's lunchbox will only be prevented from continuing their murderous deeds by effective policing. They will only be taken out of circulation when there is a police force, fully-accepted across the community, with excellent intelligence and with effective operational capacities. As long as there are sections of the community in which the police are only partially accepted, the killers will be able to plan their atrocities and perhaps remain beyond the reach of investigators and prosecutors.
The Police Service of Northern Ireland will not become the effective machine described here without the full support and endorsement of Sinn Féin. And Sinn Féin cannot, with credibility, give that support while the IRA remains armed and ready. Policing is the key and Sinn Féin holds that key in its pocket.