Two weeks is a long time in politics, but is it long enough? By the middle of this month we will know if Tony Blair has succeeded in perhaps the greatest challenge of his political career, to sweeten the Ulster Unionists who are currently taking a very sour view of his joint initiative with the Taoiseach on Northern Ireland.
The relentless optimists have told us not to underestimate the power of a Prime Minister with a massive majority and a grim determination to see this peace process through to completion. The knee-jerk pessimists, including elements of the media, have already said all is lost. They said the UUP leadership could not sell this deal to the party, even if it wanted to.
The two-page blueprint which emerged at the end of the five-day talkfest at Castle Buildings was being dismissed in different quarters at the weekend as another piece of failed gimmickry from the two governments, "just like Hillsborough and the May 14th Downing Street Document". Moods are one thing, political reality is another. According to Mr Blair and Mr Ahern both, this is a good deal which the unionists would be daft to refuse. "Humankind cannot bear very much reality," according to the poet T.S. Eliot. Can the Prime Minister and the Taoiseach convince the unionist constituency in the time available?
The signs yesterday were that they were willing to try. Mr Ahern gave a feisty interview to RTE Radio's This Week, where he outlined the merits of the deal and appealed to the IRA to make a statement to ease unionist fears. Contacts in republican circles poured cold water on any prospect of comforting words from the IRA. One of the ironies of the process is that the weaker and more divided Ulster Unionists appear to be the greater their influence over political developments. Like worried relatives standing around the bed of a hospital patient, the governments and parties wring their hands and wonder what remedies could be applied to preserve their nearest and dearest.
There is often an inclination to make concessions to the unionists to keep them aboard. "The UUP is in such a desperate state that everybody that can help them should do so," said one worried nationalist yesterday.
But the IRA will not help; the SDLP may provide tea and sympathy, but given political realities, the party can hardly give a cast-iron guarantee to form an executive without Sinn Fein if the IRA fails to decommission; and the two prime ministers, particularly Mr Blair, seem to have reached the limit of their patience with the UUP leadership.
There have been suggestions that a decision to permit the Orange Order to march on the Garvaghy Road might be taken as a means of generating goodwill among unionists. The Orangemen may have won brownie points with the Parades Commission and the Prime Minister for their conduct over recent weeks, and especially at Drumcree yesterday, but this needs to be sustained. It was early days yet, a wise Northern owl suggested. Sinn Fein complains that it is given far less leeway than the Ulster Unionists. Republicans are having difficulties of their own with the Blair-Ahern document. Reports from Castle Buildings indicate robust discussions among the Sinn Fein delegation. Sinn Fein is only a monolith on the outside. There were lively discussions, too, between UUP Assembly members and the many anti-agreement unionists who hung about Castle Buildings all week. A fair amount of finger-wagging was done by the No camp, and a hapless Trimble aide was greeted by a chorus of tut-tuts from DUP members whenever he entered the canteen.
There was some perplexity on the part of Dublin's negotiators in particular at the negative reaction to the initiative among the media. Two weary mandarins emerging tired but reasonably happy on Friday evening were, in the words of P.G. Wodehouse, "less than gruntled" to hear a television anchorman airily dismissing their efforts to camera as being unlikely to bear fruit. The Sinn Fein mood is a confident one, difficulties with the ranks notwithstanding. The republicans feel they have at long last outmanoeuvred the wily if erratic David Trimble, persuaded the British Prime Minister of their argument and politically isolated the Ulster Unionists.
Will there be IRA decommissioning? To coin a phrase, the answer is a definite maybe. Strong language has been used in the de Chastelain report, but the offer remains conditional on proper implementation of the Good Friday pact.
Republican sources said it was not a matter of reversing every aspect of what they saw as unionist misrule but of getting the main elements up and running. The North-South ministerial council with its ancillary bodies and agencies remains of critical importance to the republicans.
Full-blooded commitment to the agreement by all sides would create the kind of atmosphere and forward momentum where "removing the guns from Irish politics" became possible. There would never be a handover of guns to the British authorities but the destruction of weapons by republicans themselves in parallel with genuine "demilitarisation" by the British authorities was not an unrealistic scenario.
Meanwhile, the unionists continued their deliberations. "Controlled fury" was the description of the reaction of party officers - several of them No voters - at their meeting in Glengall Street on Saturday morning. A meeting of the party executive is expected on Friday. Friends say the leader's mood has often been better. With the Prime Minister barking over the telephone and party dissidents nibbling at your heels, how would you feel?