Anything that upsets both David Trimble and Martin McGuinness at the same time cannot be entirely good. Judging from the UUP leader's tone, yesterday was not one of his better days. A brave dream for which he has risked much is in jeopardy.
Likewise Mr McGuinness: he spoke in emotional terms about the compromises he has made to advance the peace process.
A time will have to come when these recurring crises must stop. While there is still some hope that the present one can be resolved, surely the politicians and officials will reach a point when they can take no more. Terminal fatigue will set in from too many late-night meetings and an overdose of cliffhanging, patched-up solutions
Many believe the end-product is still worth the effort, but there has to be a stage where people start to wonder if there is some virus of instability in Northern Ireland that means it can never be governed by its own politicians.
Optimists believe that, once the decommissioning boil has been lanced, everything will fall into place and Northern Ireland will function like any other place in the democratic world.
The current crisis is similar to a Greek tragedy in that nothing that has happened came as any great surprise to anyone. It is clear that the Mitchell review was a very uneasy compromise indeed. There is now a dispute over what was agreed, with the unionists, implicitly aided by an SDLP chorus, insinuating that Sinn Fein and the IRA indicated there would be a practical gesture on weapons by the end of January. Republicans flatly reject this version, adding that they have supporting correspondence and other written evidence.
The reason the media were given the cold shoulder during the Mitchell review was that too often in the past politicians went into talks and made compromises which they immediately had to disown under media interrogation. The media blackout facilitated a deal, we are told. But now we have charge and counter-charge about what was agreed and the recrimination is such that trust between the parties could be damaged beyond repair.
While most unionists would like to press ahead to the formation of an Executive with the SDLP but minus Sinn Fein and there are undoubtedly some republicans who would like to proceed to joint sovereignty and eventual Irish unity without the unionists, there is still a widespread view that the two parties need each other: they are the "odd couple" of Northern politics.
In that spirit, there was an intriguing degree of restraint on the part of Sinn Fein while the current crisis was in its early stages. The speech by Mr Gerry Adams to the Tom Williams commemoration in Belfast's Milltown Cemetery on Sunday January 23rd was surprisingly low-key and the Sinn Fein leader showed what might be considered commendable self-control in concentrating on general issues arising from the Troubles rather than responding to the rising storm of unionist attacks.
For a week at least, the unionists had a field day. Episodes such as Carrickmore and Pomeroy, sinister or gormless as the case may be, came to assume the proportions of a latter-day Kristallnacht. The adoption of the Patten report, nothing more than a rational and even conservative attempt at the gradual creation of a cross-community police force, was presented as a form of ethnic cleansing.
The unionist community began to convey that sense of victim-hood which has characterised nationalists in the past. A wave of feeling built up that it was time to call a halt and pull out of government with republicans for failing to meet a decommissioning deadline which is not in the Belfast Agreement.
Finally, Mr Adams moved at the weekend, when he outlined a scenario where, if the institutions were suspended, the IRA would probably walk out of the talks with the decommissioning body. Questioned by The Irish Times about this yesterday, he was noncommittal, but it has been established from authoritative republican sources that the channel between Gen. de Chastelain and the republican paramilitaries will be closed down if the Executive falls.
Taking the long view, this would be a serious setback. The institution of formal talks between an official body and one of Europe's deadliest guerrilla forces on weapons disposal is not only unprecedented but has to give grounds for optimism about a peaceful future. By the same token, the ending of those talks must be seen as a bad day's work and a potential threat to the ceasefire which, for good or ill, is the cornerstone of the peace process.
The warning over IRA involvement with Gen. de Chastelain clearly came as a wake-up call to Dublin which, though never idle, was galvanised into action over the weekend and since. Mr Ahern could hardly have been more vehement in the Dail yesterday on the undesirability of suspension. Mr Cowen surely does not want to start his new job with a spectacular failure. Between them they have succeeded in putting suspension on hold for two days: more nail-biting, another white-knuckle ride. The withholding of the general's report on decommissioning probably helped to ensure that nobody could quite write "finis" to the new institutions just yet.
Yesterday's statement from the IRA no doubt contributed to this latest development. Although couched in the usual jargon from the P. O'Neill Catechism of Cliche, great significance was being read into it by close observers last night who maintained that it was a roundabout way of telling us that the "war" was over. At worst it was a signal that the republican paramilitaries are still "in play".
We may be taking the first tiny steps towards resolving the crisis and by this time next week, say, the situation could look a lot more cheerful. But the question remains: when do the operatics come to an end and the prima donnas turn into ordinary politicians?