The First Minister of Northern Ireland and leader of the Ulster Unionists, Mr David Trimble, presides over his party's annual conference this weekend at the Killyhevlin Hotel, near Enniskillen. The venue has significant resonances. Almost 12 years after the Remembrance Day massacre, Enniskillen remains for unionists the primary symbol of the IRA's sectarian war against their community. The Killyhevlin Hotel itself has been reconstructed from the aftermath of a dissident republican bombing. It will take some courage for Mr Trimble to stand up in such a venue this weekend and ask his party to back him in seeking to find a formula that allows Sinn Fein into government while the IRA's arsenal remains intact. It is likely that there will be acrimonious words and possibly angry scenes. But Mr Trimble appears to be determined to push to the outer limits of the possible in order to get an executive up and running. When Sinn Fein spokesmen criticise him for allegedly failing in his responsibilities under the Belfast Agreement, it is worth recalling just how far the unionist leader has come. Before the signing of the agreement it was considered unthinkable in both governments that Sinn Fein could be in any administration without prior IRA disarmament. The Taoiseach, President Clinton and Mr Blair have all, at various times, insisted that it is a prerequisite. Sinn Fein says it cannot deliver, that the agreement makes no such precondition and that it sets no start-date for decommissioning. Reasonable people would argue that since it does, however, set a finishing date - May 2000 - it must start sometime. But as far back as his Nobel acceptance speech in Olso, Mr Trimble recognised the ambiguities and offered to be flexible in linking decommissioning with the establishment of the executive. The answer from the IRA was a series of statements that it would never decommission.
In March Mr Trimble advanced the idea that the republicans and the unionists should "jump together" - that IRA decommissioning and the establishment of an executive should be simultaneous. Sinn Fein and the IRA could give no undertakings on this either. Now, with Senator Mitchell presiding over the last-chance "review" of the agreement, unionists are yet again pushing out the limits of flexibility. Dr Esmond Birnie has suggested that if an executive were to be brought into existence, Sinn Fein members should commit themselves to withdrawing if the IRA then refuses to move on decommissioning. Somewhat similar "failsafe" proposals have been advanced in the past by Mr John Hume and Mr Seamus Mallon. Dr Birnie insists that he is speaking personally, but there can be little doubt that he is probing for possibilities.
The response of Sinn Fein and the IRA to the unionists' evident desire to secure an accommodation is at best unclear, at worst malevolently ambiguous. Dr Birnie quoted Mr Martin McGuinness as saying that if an executive were set up "all parties" would have a collective responsibility to get rid of guns and that "Sinn Fein would play a positive role in that respect". This may be well-intentioned, but it is regarded by many unionists as more of the casuistry which has seen the nationalist community secure a wide range of gains from the agreement while giving nothing in return. If Senator Mitchell's review is to succeed it will require two things: a unionist willingness to proceed with the establishment of an executive without a prior start to decommissioning; and clarity and commitment by those who lead the republican movement to the elimination of paramilitary weaponry, under the supervision of General John de Chastelain. It is evident that Mr Trimble is anxious and willing to do what is required of him. It is not at all clear that the same can be said for the republicans.