WORLDVIEW: Four major issues loom in Northern Ireland after the the holiday season's comparative calm, belying the picture of normality it portrayed.
The British and Irish governments must decide whether to go ahead with the Assembly elections postponed from last May. The Provisionals face a major decision on disarmament and the future of the IRA. David Trimble faces yet another challenge to his leadership of the Ulster Unionist Party. And the possibility of a fundamental review of the Belfast Agreement is possible.
Does this clustering indicate a crisis for the agreement or a set of problems capable of being solved? No one should underestimate the amount of time both governments have devoted to the North, or the likelihood that both Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair will continue to do so after their holiday breaks. They work so hard in the belief that these are soluble problems which will eventually enable the North to achieve political normality.
The agreement and the prolonged political process of including Sinn Féin and the paramilitaries in the search for a settlement have had a good reception in Ireland, Britain and internationally - but they have never lacked critics.
Prominent among them has been the Cadogan Group. They are often described as "new unionists" keen to modernise a very reactive ideology; but its members dispute the description and maintain they are committed to finding realistic solutions most likely to produce long-term peace and stability. Their pamphlets and other writings may be found on their website, www.cadogan.org. Their current members are Colin Armstrong, Arthur Aughey, Paul Bew, Arthur Green, Graham Gudgin, Dennis Kennedy and Steven King.
The group has published a new pamphlet this summer, Picking Up the Pieces, Northern Ireland after the Belfast Agreement. It is a thoughtful critique, timely as these issue arise again. The group has been criticised for a condescending attitude to Irish nationalism, based on an assumption that the multi-national, multi-ethnic British state is self-evidently superior to the exclusivist and monolithically Catholic Irish one.
This pamphlet is more rounded, addressing itself to fundamental shortcomings of the agreement and what the UK and Irish governments, unionists and nationalists in Northern Ireland can do about them.
It argues that to portray the Northern Ireland problem as one of injustice towards nationalists rather than conflicting allegiances and differing identities is false and misleading.
While discrimination against Catholics in housing, employment and electoral boundaries is well-documented and was inexcusable, it has been exaggerated and used to justify a mistaken analysis of the problem. The inability "to find common ground for identity and allegiance between unionist and nationalist is the core of the problem, not the treatment of one community by the other, nor the comparative disadvantage of one vis-a-vis the other".
Such an erroneous approach "has allowed an agreement to be developed which is far from a genuine or final settlement, and which has led to a destabilising revolution of rising nationalist expectations and growing unionist alienation". It goes on to say that "in this context peace means a ceasefire not a settlement, an accommodation not reconciliation and a new beginning". There is a real danger that "we face an enduring and sullen standoff within which sectarianism will continue to flourish and violence will be tolerated or even condoned".
Unionism is defined as always as a "simple reaction to Irish nationalism" and its traditional response to it "scorn and ridicule" rather than a sincere dialogue. But the conflict of allegiance has deep roots in the history of these islands, they acknowledge, "a history dominated for many centuries by the overwhelming power of what became the British state". Does this not define unionism too as part of British nationalism and not solely reactive?
They also agree that "identities are not fixed for all time". Does it not follow that the nationalist aspiration to a united Ireland which could accommodate unionist identities, using the agreement as a stepping stone, is itself theoretically feasible and politically realistic? Isn't the agreement itself an example of what legal scholars describe as a hybrid instrument of domestic and international law, associated with transitional justice dedicated to resolving such a deep-seated conflict outside the traditional bounds of British sovereignty?
Not so, say these authors. They believe the results of the December 2001 census, published last December, "indicate that constitutional change is effectively off the agenda . . . Unionists and nationalists now have to face the reality that they have to live with each other within the United Kingdom - probably forever".
To this end the British government has to learn to treat the North as an inherent part of the UK and not as if it were an issue of foreign rather than domestic policy. The agreement should be changed by abandoning the d'Hondt arrangements for mandatory coalition in favour of voluntary ones, so that the "prize of ministerial power would then provide a real incentive for Sinn Féin completely to sever its links with violent paramilitarism". London should abandon "the foolish practice of appearing to give Dublin an equal share in solving the problem", leading to unworkable joint authority.
Unionist parties need to recognise and engage nationalism, sever links to the Orange Order, recruit more Catholics, challenge sectarianism and cultivate much greater shared cultural identities within Ireland and the UK.
Nationalists need to confront Sinn Féin's violent links and learn not to equate political identity with citizenship, nor nationality with place of residence.
The Irish Government needs to overcome the double standards which indulge Sinn Féin's paramilitarism under cover of long-term support for unification and cultivate a more even-handed approach to both communities in the North. They conclude that "for the foreseeable future there will be cross-community government in Northern Ireland, and there will be significant and probably expanding cross-Border co-operation and all-Ireland institutions". These are challenging - and certainly contestable - arguments, but not ones to be overlooked or dismissed by the agreement's supporters.