A sequence of steps, with movement from both unionists and the IRA/Sinn Fein, is reported as the likely joint strategy of the two governments in seeking to break the decommissioning impasse over coming days. The formula now being described by well-informed correspondents has something of the "jumping together" solution which has been advanced before to get around the problem of having one side or the other appearing to yield. Today, the Taoiseach and the Prime Minister will meet in London at Cardinal Hume's funeral before travelling to Belfast for further discussion ahead of next week's final push before the June 30th deadline.
On the face of it, the reported formula demands two things which have heretofore been deemed impossible. The IRA/Sinn Fein will be asked to give a firm and unequivocal commitment that decommissioning will be completed by May of next year. The unionists will be asked to take such a declaration at face value and to agree to enter an executive with Sinn Fein without any "product" being yielded up and without a verification that decommissioning is actually under way. But the IRA has repeatedly insisted that it will never give up a single round of ammunition or an ounce of semtex in any circumstances. And while there was a point at which the unionists might have been open to such an undertaking - as distinct from an actual handover of guns - their position has increasingly hardened.
Mr Trimble has, undoubtedly, been painted into a tight corner and his ill-tempered attack on Dr Mo Mowlam is indicative of a measurable loss of judgment. But it will be remembered that at various points along the way Mr Trimble offered the sort of flexibility which is now sought - notably in his Nobel Prize acceptance speech in Oslo. What this process has not had up to now is any similar expression of willingness from the republicans. Mr Adams declared in March that he would seek to "stretch the republican constituency" but there has been nothing so far to match that undertaking. And when the present reported formula is boiled down it is clear that without such an initiative from the IRA/Sinn Fein, it too must be doomed to failure.
There should be no assumption, because the two governments appear to have agreed on a strategy, that success over coming days is likely. The handling of the process over recent months has been hamfisted and inconsistent and uncoordinated. Successive contradictory stances have been struck, first at Hillsborough and later at Downing Street. The Taoiseach and the Prime Minister have both performed clumsy U-turns, initially placing the onus for movement on the republicans and then switching it to the unionists. If there is a principled foundation to present policy it is not apparent. Maybe it has to be accepted for the moment that principle must take second place to avoiding a collapse of the Belfast Agreement and a return to full-scale violence. But it does not explain or excuse failures of co-ordination such as Mr Blair's announcement of the June 30th deadline without Dublin's prior knowledge. Mr Blair has said there is no "Plan B" if the executive cannot be brought into being. It must be unlikely that this is so and it is greatly to be hoped that even now the civil servants and strategists are at work. The Belfast Agreement has been endorsed by the overwhelming majority of the people of this island. If part of it - even a central part - cannot be implemented at this time, the efforts of the two governments must be to conserve and advance its other elements. It might be tempting to break up the Assembly and stop the pay of its members, perhaps as a way of concentrating minds. But would it not be a step back from the advances which have been made? Unionists and republicans may not yet be able to sit together in an administration. But they are sharing corridors, meetings rooms, facilities and dialogue. Does it make sense to put an end to that?