Blair seems to be losing his cool between war and peace

Tony Blair shows signs of losing his famous cool. This is hardly surprising. Running a war and a peace process at the same time is enough to tax the strengths of even the most Olympian political leader. And Northern Ireland, and its political representatives, can truly test the patience of a saint.

More worrying is the evidence of Saturday afternoon's "absolute" deadline that the British Prime Minister might also be losing some of his famed judgment.

Certainly, if the Downing Street lash was intended to whip the local parties into line, those administering it would seem to know little of the unionist or republican psychology. Neither side has a track record of jumping obediently to ultimatums issued by British prime ministers. Both sides will know that Downing Street has some experience of setting target dates and deadlines, only to shift them.

And republicans, in particular, will have an acute sense that "ownership" of the peace process hardly resides with Mr Blair and his advisers in Number 10.

More telling still in their likely response is the manifest absurdity of an "absolute" deadline for devolution and the threat which would seem to lie behind it.

It is an open secret that when David Trimble left Downing Street last Tuesday he did not wish to return, as had been planned, on Friday. For all his previously optimistic noises, the Ulster Unionist leader had concluded nothing much would or could happen before the European elections on June 10th.

It is equally well known that Mr Blair has no time for this approach. The Prime Minister knows the Euro contest presents Mr Trimble with a potential problem. He also takes the view that the summer months, and the continuing crisis at Drumcree, represent an altogether more potent threat - possibly to the Belfast Agreement itself.

So we were left in no doubt last week that some 18 hours of formal negotiations were driven by Mr Blair's personal determination to have the new institutions of government in place before a potentially violent and divisive summer. Mr Martin McGuinness is not alone in fearing that, if this does not happen, there is no guarantee of anything to return to come the autumn.

But while Mr Blair pressed the parties hard, British sources carefully weighed the options - reporting the process "inching" along, while always playing down expectations of an imminent breakthrough and insisting that there was no question in any event of the process being "parked".

Yet by Saturday afternoon we were being told Mr Blair had set June 30th as an "absolute" deadline for the devolution of power. Questions about what would happen then, should the parties fail to resolve the decommissioning issue, were met with . . . well, nothing really, beyond the intimation that they would address that issue should it arise.

Would Mr Blair be prepared to call it a day? Park the process after all? Worse still, wrap it up? Cancel Assembly salaries, or go the whole hog and suspend the Assembly itself? On the first of July? With the Orangemen presumably descending once more on Drumcree?

It is always possible that Mr Blair could find himself confronted with the nightmare scenario. While it would seem unlikely with the party now well poised for the European campaign, some observers fancy Sinn Fein might ultimately walk in protest at the British failure to "face down the rejectionists".

BUT it is scarcely credible that Mr Blair would plunge Northern Ireland along the path of self-fulfilling prophecy by pulling the plug himself - no matter what the level of his frustration or temptation.

Nor, frankly, is it much more credible that either government thought to resolve the issue of decommissioning and Sinn Fein's entry into government with the document prepared in Downing Street on Friday night - and, moreover, to have done so by teatime on Saturday.

The draft agreement contains absolutely no guarantee of IRA decommissioning before or after the creation of the executive, nor does it contain any sanction to be deployed against Sinn Fein, as long advocated by Seamus Mallon, should the IRA fail to decommission by May 2000.

It allows that - between the triggering of the d'Hondt procedure for the appointment of ministers, and the transfer of power by June 30th - Gen de Chastelain would report back on "progress" made in a fresh round of intensive discussions with the parties on decommissioning. But it does not say what would constitute "progress". Nor does it indicate what, if anything, would happen should that anticipated progress fail to materialise - beyond that the whole proposition is "without prejudice" to the positions of the parties on the decommissioning issue.

If this proposal represents the sum total of the agreement reached and intended on Friday night, it would suggest a Trimble U-turn of epic proportions - one for which his party had not been prepared, and to which it was never likely to have reconciled itself fewer than 24 hours later.

Indeed, a quick check on Mr Trimble's plans for consultation with his party indicated on Saturday morning that he clearly did not anticipate giving Downing Street a positive response by tea-time. As the UUP leader flew back to Belfast for a meeting with his Assembly colleagues, sources confirmed that no arrangements had been made for meetings of the party officers, the parliamentary party or the party's executive committee.

If, just weeks before a dangerous European election, Mr Trimble had thought to effect a dramatic shift in policy, they would all have had to be "in the loop". And upon discovering that they weren't to be consulted (at least on Saturday) senior figures in all three categories professed themselves content - either that Mr Trimble knew the plan would not pass the Assembly party, or that it did not in fact amount to a policy change.

Which is precisely what Mr Trimble and his deputy, Mr John Taylor, told their colleagues at Stormont, and the press thereafter.

As The Irish Times reports today, Mr Trimble apparently regarded Friday night's draft as incomplete. And he assured his colleagues that the entire proposal was predicated on his understanding (to be confirmed in new standing orders for the Assembly) that "progress" to be reported by the general would mean "actual" decommissioning was under way, or soon to be so.

This suggestion was greeted with incredulity by one nationalist insider last night. He quickly summarised it to mean the reinstatement of the unionist precondition for prior decommissioning, and thus, from a republican perspective, an even worse proposition than the Hillsborough declaration which Sinn Fein had seemingly successfully killed off. If it were true, he concluded, the entire negotiation had been a waste of time and succeeded only in returning everybody back to square one.

Inevitably, the landscape will be clouded for some time to come with disputes over precisely what was agreed and intended. But importantly, in assessing the conflicting claims, one senior Irish source on Saturday had indicated that the draft agreement did give the Ulster Unionists an "opt-out" clause at the point at which things were set to "go live".

The Irish Times also understands this idea featured strongly in Mr Trimble's discussions with his Assembly colleagues. However, if the party leader saw it as an insurance policy, some of his colleagues detected a trap. One of eight Assembly members who spoke against the "deal" told Mr Trimble directly he was being invited to "take a leap in the dark, split the party and risk defeat in the European election, and all for something that might not happen anyway." And he offered Mr Trimble a nightmare scenario in which the UUP at that point could be seen to bear sole responsibility for bringing the entire edifice down.

If Mr Trimble's is the accurate account, it raises some awkward questions - both about his style and conduct of negotiation, and about Downing Street's behaviour on Saturday.

Why, if he regarded the draft as incomplete, did Mr Trimble not agree a statement with the other leaders on Friday night saying as much, indicating progress made but work continuing? Why the need for an emergency session of the Assembly party on Saturday, when (because the relevant standing orders had not been drafted) it would have seemed that, at best, only a conditional answer could be forthcoming?

And why, if such was their shared understanding, had Number 10 briefed the Sunday lobby, and alerted the media to expect a significant statement, presumably proclaiming breakthrough, at five o'clock on Saturday evening?

Some unionists, inevitably, suspect Mr Blair was trying to "bounce" Mr Trimble. However, the whole affair will also have increased internal party suspicions of Mr Trimble himself. That spells bad news for Mr Blair (and Mr Ahern) who surely realise that this one won't be cracked by a play with words. On the principle of decommissioning - as opposed to questions of timing and sequencing - one side or the other will have to give. And it remains unclear which side they expect to do so.

Until it is, it is certainly hard to see how Mr Blair can either devise or direct the sanction implicit in his new, and this time, "absolute" deadline.