As Northern Ireland faces a week of marathon negotiations to overcome the decommissioning impasse and set up the executive, church leaders and international statesmen have been calling on the politicians to do everything in their power to break the deadlock.
The Catholic Primate of all Ireland, Archbishop Sean Brady, said people needed to be reminded of what had already been achieved through negotiation. "We must keep encouraging people to have trust in negotiation and the power of dialogue," he told BBC Radio Ulster.
Dr Brady called on all parties to commit themselves to the principles of non-violence, regardless of this week's outcome.
"What is needed, I think, is a most solemn commitment that whatever happens in the future, whatever conflicts arise, violence is not an option as a way of resolving them," he said.
According to Dr Brady, decommissioning is only "a means to an end, the end of convincing people that the parties representing paramilitaries have abandoned once and for all the path of violence, the use of violence as a means of resolving conflicts".
The former US senator, Mr George Mitchell, who helped broker last year's Belfast Agreement has offered to do what he can to help local politicians resolve the decommissioning dispute. "If it was absolutely essential that I could play some role, obviously I would never say No," he told BBC 1's Breakfast With Frost programme.
It would, however, be wrong for political leaders here to call on outside help every time there was a dispute, Mr Mitchell said.
"Neither I nor the Prime Ministers nor any outsiders can be summoned every time a problem arises."
He also stressed the importance of decommissioning paramilitary weapons. "I do think it is not a question of whether or not decommissioning will occur. It must occur. It is an essential part of the Good Friday agreement. The question is: when and in what sequence of events will it occur? That is a very difficult question, but I believe it can be resolved."
The Sinn Fein chairman, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, described the hope for a weapons hand-over in the next few days as unrealistic.
"I think it is unrealistic to expect that the IRA will wake up on Monday or Tuesday and say, `Well, we're going to decommission'. I think that's not available to us," he told BBC Radio Five Live.
But Mr McLaughlin said he was hopeful that the Ulster Unionists would shift their demand for prior decommissioning.
"I do think that next week we can get the Unionist Party to agree with Sinn Fein, the SDLP, the Women's Coalition, the Alliance Party and the Progressive Unionists that we should move to the next step of setting up the political institutions, the executive committee and the North-South ministerial council," he added.
The leader of the anti-agreement UK Unionist Party, Mr Robert McCartney, has called on the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, to "honour his promises to the electorate last May before making new hollow pledges".