Given the overlap in the speeches of Tony Blair and Gerry Adams, one could be forgiven for wondering what the problem is, writes Dan Keenan
Take a look at the following four quotations. They are excerpts from deeply personal and carefully worded speeches - one by Mr Tony Blair, the other by Mr Gerry Adams on the same topic within a 10-day period.
"Did anyone seriously believe it would be easy? Did we seriously entertain the notion that the agreement would be signed on the 10th April, 1998, and on the 11th it would all be different?"
"No one ever said that this was going to be easy but it is the single most important thing that any of us can do at this time in our history."
"The continuing existence of the IRA as an active paramilitary organisation is now the best card those whom republicans call 'rejectionist' unionists have in their hand."
"I do want to acknowledge in a very clear way that the difficulties within unionism have been severely exacerbated by the ongoing focus on alleged IRA activities."
Any of these lines could have been said with sincerity by either political leader. Just for the record, the first and third lines belong to the British Prime Minister, while the other two were uttered with conviction by the Sinn Féin president.
Given the overlap - and there are other quotations from both men which are in as much harmony - one could be forgiven for wondering what the problem is, why the Stormont institutions have been suspended and why the Belfast Agreement is in the state it is.
It can be concluded that republicans and the British government do not differ fundamentally on the philosophy at the core of the agreement. They did after all sign up to it.
The current argument is a circular one. Mr Blair wants paramilitary activity to stop to enable the political process to deliver bountiful change, while republicans want bountiful change to secure the end of all paramilitary activity.
The Prime Minister says one will lead to the other, the Sinn Féin leader agrees - except it's the other way round.
Sinn Féin is going out of its way to sound positive about this. Sources admitted on Saturday morning they would be very surprised if there was not a positive response from both the British and Irish governments.
Early indications are that a measured positive response is what they have got. They stress that Mr Adams's response to Mr Blair is measured and considered, just as the Prime Minister asked. They also insist there is no "blame game" in progress. There have been no knee-jerks - even though some of Mr Blair's lines angered them - and there are no ultimatums and no timetables.
They insist they are dealing not with hypothetical situations but with reality and they would like the British to consider some points which they see as salient.
Republicans insist the British government still sees unionists as allies while viewing republicanism as an ideology which has still to be defeated.
They are also sceptical about Mr Blair's claims that loyalist and republican violence is being treated in the same manner and that unionists are as opposed to the protracted campaign of violence by the UDA and others as they are to IRA activity.
Both these claims illustrate exposed republican nerves. The first raises suspicions of double standards, while the second puts question marks alongside that most cherished of republican trophies - legitimacy.
Twenty years almost to the day since Sinn Féin sought an electoral mandate in a Stormont election, Martin McGuinness and Bairbre de Brúare, or rather were, ministers because of democratic support, not thanks to Blairite or unionist charity.
Since Good Friday 1998 they also feel that much has been done to encourage "the centre" at the expense of the other parties. When a triumphant Bono held aloft the hands of David Trimble and John Hume at a Belfast U2 concert back then, it seemed to some as though Séamus Mallon was right, that Good Friday was indeed about "Sunningdale for slow learners".
For Sinn Féin, there was a fundamental difference, they were on board this time whereas they were ostracised before. Anything Mr Blair, or Mr Paul Murphy for that matter, does now which smacks of enhancing the "centre" at the expense of republicans will be emphatically opposed. And suspension of Stormont, at the behest of Mr Trimble, seems suspiciously like it.
Mr Adams's speech, while hardly brief at 5,000 words (Did Fidel Castro help write it? quipped a colleague at the weekend), was tactically clever.
It conceded some points such as the effect of IRA activity on unionists. It overlapped with the Prime Minister's thoughts on the need for a paramilitary-free future and, perhaps most clever of all, it employed British logic and Downing Street thinking.
Dr Mo Mowlam in her day flogged to death the line that everything must be dealt with "in the round". Indeed, the logic of the Belfast Agreement was that nothing was agreed until everything was agreed. Yet, says a prominent Sinn Féin insider, here is a Prime Minister wishing to deal with IRA violence in isolation, and that's not how things work.
It is widely accepted there is no chance the IRA will do away with itself because a British government or a unionist leader would like it to. Gerry Adams said he would like a united Ireland with no British soldiers - now. But he isn't going to get what he wants just like that. Tony and David can't have what they want so easily either.
Mr Adams's speech was an attempt to put the focus firmly back on the British side. He wants Mr Blair to face up to unionists, who will wriggle out of the demands of the agreement if they are given half a chance, he says. He also wants Mr Blair to square up to anti-agreement elements within, what he persistently calls, "the British system" and to push ahead with rapid and full implementation of the agreement.
It is that triumph of politics which will hasten the day, the theory goes, when there will be no IRA. But it doesn't work the other way around.