The process is primarily about trust and without specific words trust will remain absent, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
Figuring out this bewildering stage of the peace process is becoming a job for lexicographers, not political pundits.
Last Sunday the British government said it wanted the IRA to say it "will" end paramilitary activity, not that it "should" end such actions. Yesterday we got that W-word, but Dublin and London said it still wasn't enough.
The general initial journalistic reaction to Mr Gerry Adams's speech on Sunday was that this isn't going to sort the logjam because Mr Adams was speaking as leader of Sinn Féin, not as the proxy leader of the IRA.
But then Dublin and London surprised us with positive responses to Mr Adams's Stormont address, saying this answered two of the three questions put to the IRA by Mr Tony Blair - that it would decommission all weapons and that it would end its war.
Here was a dramatic shift in Northern politics, a formal dispensing with necessary fictions, if you like. The governments were officially conceding that they viewed Mr Adams as P. Ó Neill's understudy, if not P. Ó Neill himself.
Two of Mr Blair's questions answered, just one more required, said the governments: is the IRA ending all activity? As Mr Blair's spokesman said on Sunday night: "We need assurances that activity will not happen, not should not happen." At the Sinn Féin offices on the Falls Road yesterday Mr Adams - minutes before a critical meeting between the British prime minister and UUP leader, Mr David Trimble in London - issued a short statement.
The key sentence reads: "The IRA leadership is determined that there will be no activities which will undermine in any way the peace process and the Good Friday agreement." The initial reaction, based on the fact that the governments accepted Mr Adams's words as the IRA's word on Sunday, was that this answered the remaining question, or question 1, posed by the prime minister.
It's worth repeating that question in full, which was based on the unpublished IRA statement issued on Sunday week: "When the IRA say that their strategies and disciplines will not be inconsistent with the Good Friday agreement, does that mean an end to all activities, inconsistent with the Good Friday agreement, including targeting, procurement of weapons, so-called punishment beatings and so forth?"
Mr Blair wanted an end to actions "inconsistent with" the Belfast Agreement. According to Mr Adams the IRA was determined to end all actions that "undermine" the agreement. Surely "undermine" is an equivalent if not even stronger word than "inconsistent with"? The two governments however say the IRA need to spell out that when it refers to no activities that undermine the agreement this clearly means so-called punishment attacks, targeting, procurement of weapons, exiling, etc.
Such a commitment may seem implicit in Mr Adams's remarks, but to quote British and Irish sources, speaking from the same briefing note: "If that is what he means, why doesn't he just say it." What's crucial here is that this process is primarily about trust, and without specific words trust will remain absent - that's the unfortunate political reality, they added. They also suggested that the additional words were not omitted by accident by the Sinn Féin president.
Mr Adams could have clarified those questions yesterday but that was not possible because he would not take questions from reporters. Equally, Mr Martin McGuinness who did a series of broadcast interviews yesterday evening wasn't providing any more explication. "No more word games," he said.
The British and Irish governments say they will maintain contact with republicans to try to find that extra clarity.
But republicans said that such is the grassroots' anger at what they believe are too many concessions that what the governments got yesterday from Mr Adams is as good as it will get.
So, we're back to a semantic as well as political stalemate. Why though didn't the governments accept Mr Adams' commitments on behalf of the IRA and in the weeks ahead test them against the IRA's actions? The answer may lie in that encounter at Downing Street yesterday between Mr Blair and Mr Trimble. It's reasonable to deduce that, while Dublin probably could have lived with Mr Adams's statement, the main pressure for additional IRA wording was coming from Mr Blair, acting at the behest of Mr Trimble.
The prime minister owes Mr Trimble for, in his own inimitable way, sticking with this process. For Mr Trimble to be able to state that the governments were backing up his demands for IRA commitments that would be understandable to every unionist, was providing him with cover when he is under great pressure from the DUP and the anti-agreement wing of the UUP.
As stated here before it at least allows him to argue that his pressure brought the IRA thus far, and even if the Assembly election goes ahead as planned on May 29th he can equally claim that not only London but Dublin also supports his adamant stance on clearly knowing the IRA's future intentions.
All this lexicographical analysis, however could prove academic because such was the political despondency last night that short of a further dramatic movement from the IRA, odds were the election would be postponed and the deadlocked political process "parked" through to the autumn.