Something of a high tide of optimism may build around the Northern peace process over coming weeks. The IRA ceasefire has been officially pronounced bona fide by the British government. Sinn Fein will sign up for the Mitchell Principles soon and will be admitted to the Stormont talks on September 15th. On Monday, the Archbishop of Armagh, Dr Sean Brady, will sit down for an exchange of views with the leader of the Ulster Unionists, Mr David Trimble. And there is a tentative optimism that when the talks resume at Stormont, the UUP will be there, albeit perhaps, at arm's length
If so, then the real testing will begin. Those who come to the process without imagination, without flexibility and without confidence will be revealed fairly swiftly. Those who come only to rehearse past grievances and to restate tribal certainties will find themselves exposed. If the talks open on anything resembling a high note, it is a safe bet that within a short time, the briefings and the intimations will describe conditions of near deadlock. Such is the way of political negotiation at this high level and with such high stakes. It will require leadership and mediation skills of the first order to bring the participants through to some form of consensus.
Much stress has been laid by commentators on the challenge facing the unionists in particular. Others have emphasised the task facing the SDLP and, indeed, the Sinn Fein negotiators. There has been little enough concentration of late on the part which will be played by the Dublin representatives headed politically by the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Mr Burke, and at official level by the head of Anglo-Irish affairs at Iveagh House, Mr Dermot Gallagher, lately returned after a six-year stint as Ambassador in Washington. There was however, a provocative and timely reminder for Dublin of the gravity of its mission in the remarks at the Merriman Summer School of the former head of the Northern Ireland Civil Service, Sir Kenneth Bloomfield. He described a "fatal flaw" in the 1985 Anglo-Irish Agreement - its entrenching in perpetuity of the Irish Government as the guarantor and protector of the minority in Northern Ireland. That, Sir Kenneth reasoned, flies in the face of principled "Wolfe Tone nationalism" which would not distinguish between Catholic, Protestant and Dissenter. There will not be universal sympathy for that analysis in Dublin. But more tellingly Sir Kenneth delivered a well-aimed broadside at Southern complacency down the decades. Policy towards Northern Ireland had been "deeply flawed, unproductive or even counter-productive". "Come over and join us on the other side", the South had urged the North, "while at the same time hacking down all the existing bridges". Supposing there were, one day, a Northern majority in favour of unity, he asked, what intellectual preparation has been made for that contingency? "Is it supposed that the pre-occupations of the distinctive Northern Unionist-Protestant community would just fade away? Is it imagined that the arrangements for the governance of a pretty homogenous State would be apt for a new and heterogeneous one?"
Mr Burke and his delegation may not be asked to give answers to these - and related questions - on September 15th. But if the talks process is successful, they will certainly have to do so before its conclusion. A challenge of historic proportions will then face this Government and indeed the people of this State. There are not too many signs of our preparedness.