The hard line statement by the IRA has changed the political landscape absolutely, short of the impossibility of another statement reversing it. It makes nonsense of a position that Mr Gerry Adams has spent considerable time in developing, right up to his recent efforts to dissociate himself from the IRA and subscribe to Mitchell. Now all he is apparently left with is the protest on Monday when he arrives at Stormont and is shut out of the talks.
It will be a set piece battle, and a hollow set piece victory. Once again, the politics of gesture and propaganda will have taken the place of an historic attempt to negotiate a way through the quagmires and find a political settlement satisfactory to all.
To be fair to Mr Adams, the fact that the IRA, appears to have done its own demolition job reflects his personal unwillingness to close the door only a few days ago, he admitted that the outcome of talks, if he participated, could fall short of the traditional aspirations of republicanism. But he has left enough false scents on the trail for there to be room for uncertainty about his motives and his aims. Few can doubt that the historically high vote for Sinn Fein last Thursday owed more to the hope of a renewed ceasefire than to his ambiguities. The timing of the IRA announcement tacitly acknowledges it.
More important and more urgent are the effects of the IRA's latest move on the diplomatic attempt to get stalks started next Monday Sinn Fein cannot shift its own share of responsibility if the talks are not comprehensive. The agreement late last night, which seems to resolve the major difference about the role of Mr George Mitchell, means that once more the political process is under way as the result of a last minute agreement. That issue, and decommissioning, have been deeply ideological questions when put in the context of the necessity to admit Sinn Fein to the talks.
In the light of the uncompromising tone of the IRA statement, its insistence on "immediate entry without any preconditions whatsoever", its clear indication that however the talks go, there will be no budging on disarmament this side of a final settlement is it possible to believe that the latest formula will cut through this terrible refusal to face the democratic process of negotiation and compromise? The final sentence of the statement.
We will never leave nationalist areas defenceless before a settlement is concluded has a fatalistic ring.
It is not easy to forget, however, that the kind of defence" that the IRA and loyalist organisations specialised in for 25 bloody years resulted in more innocent Catholics and Protestants being killed, not fewer. The true aim of paramilitary violence is not defence but conquest. There can be no doubt about that.
There must be no going down that road again. The peace process has the potential to transform politics on this island, and to allow it to falter now, most immediately by abandoning the opening date for the talks next. There must be no going down that road again. The peace process has the potential to transform politics on, this island, and to allow it to falter now, most immediately by abandoning the opening date for talks next Monday, would be to collaborate in what now looks, like a carefully structured attempt to strengthen Sinn Fein's political position at the expense, in the North, of the SDLP, and on the island as a whole to present it as a spokesman for a nation. For Mr Adams, consensus has never meant trimming his own beliefs to those of the representatives of majority nationalism.
Courage is needed to steer the right course encouraging Sinn Fein to join but recognising that it makes its own choices. Too much has been invested in the political process to allow it to suffer a setback now.