Could anything more dramatically represent the distances which have been covered in the peace process than the applause on Saturday afternoon at Sinn Fein's Ardfheis for the Ulster Unionist leader, Mr David Trimble? "Well done, David", beamed the Sinn Fein President, Mr Gerry Adams, from the podium as he relayed the news of the UUP vote in support of the Good Friday agreement. Acres of print and hundreds of hours of broadcast time are being devoted to coverage of the unfolding saga - and it is all necessary. But in the blizzards of detail, certain moments like this one leap out of the chronicle. What could better illustrate the reality that extraordinary heavings are registering on the once-frozen ground of the North?
Mr Trimble's success on Saturday falls well short of a guarantee that the Agreement's objectives are now secure. But it confirms that there is a solid and wide base in mainstream unionism for the compromise which the Agreement embodies. Mr Trimble's leadership is reinforced and his judgment is vindicated. Nonetheless, and in spite of the stock affirmations of solidarity and unity, the result also raises serious questions for the coherence of the party. Mr Trimble says he now expects it to abide by its own decision, democratically taken. But certain elders are profoundly disquieted and have difficult decisions to take. Mr Trimble will have to tread a narrow path between accommodating dissent while guarding against the poisons of internal subversion.
It was unquestionably David Trimble's weekend. But it was not a bad weekend for the leadership of Sinn Fein either. There were standing ovations for Mr Adams and the negotiators at the Stormont talks. There were some masterful performances both from the platform and in the media. And there was just about the right amount of negativity towards the Agreement to create a tactically-useful sense of ongoing disquiet and uncertainty as to the party's intentions. Sinn Fein is in a win-win situation, with a wide variety of options over the coming weeks and Mr Adams made it clear that the party will pick and choose to its advantage. If it rejects the Agreement it can, nonetheless, contest the elections to the new assembly. It can accept the Agreement but resist the proposed amendment of Articles 2 and 3 in the Republic. By putting any such decisions back to a special conference in some weeks' time, Sinn Fein succeeds in extending the ambiguities within which it has so advantageously cloaked itself for so long.
Mr Adams and the leadership have displayed supremely effective political skills in holding the Provisional movement together through this process. And it seems likely that they will succeed in doing so right up to the proposed electoral tests of the Agreement - the referendums and the assembly elections. Where they will find themselves under the greatest pressure may not be in relation to the institutions which are envisaged in the Agreement but in addressing the issues of decommissioning, of policing and of prisoners. No administration North or South will accept that people with private armies can participate in new executive institutions. The party which supported David Trimble by almost three to one on Saturday will eat him alive if they think he is about to collude in what they would see as a betrayal of the RUC. And before ever one takes the temperature of the Northern communities on prisoner releases, one only has to consider the deep anger which has been caused in the Republic by Mr Martin Ferris's declaration that he would expect those accused of the Garda McCabe murder to walk free.
Sooner or later the leadership of Sinn Fein will have to tell its followers that the IRA is redundant, that the RUC is not being disbanded and that those who take human life in particularly brutal circumstances - indeed in defiance of the IRA's own standing orders - cannot escape without penalty.