This week's tensions between the Irish and British governments may reflect the fact that, although sharing the same objective, they may have approached this crisis with slightly different agendas. Our Government seems to have been primarily concerned with securing the outcome envisaged in the Belfast Agreement, decommissioning by the May 22th deadline. For its part the British government, pessimistic about any IRA movement on the arms issue, seems, at least until yesterday, to have been focusing more on the immediate crisis created by the UUP's self-generated early February deadline.
These different priorities reflect the fact that the agreement and the institutions it established are at present doubly threatened. On one hand if the institutions are suspended, any prospect of IRA decommissioning might disappear. For, with nothing to show for years of work on its political agenda, Sinn Fein could lose its capacity to persuade the IRA to decommission. That has seemed to be the most critical issue to the Irish Government.
On the other side, if the institutions are not suspended, then, given the balance within unionism in the Assembly, once David Trimble's post-dated resignation takes effect it would appear impossible to secure in this Assembly a majority for the future election of a First Minister and Deputy First Minister.
Nor, after such a spectacular breakdown, does it seem at all likely that a further election in the North would yield unionist representation with a more moderate complexion, capable of electing a new cross-community executive. The British government's priority during most of last week - understandably, perhaps, in a situation where there seemed to be no hope of getting any the IRA to make any commitment to decommission, let alone start doing so - seems to have been to prevent the effective disintegration of pro-agreement unionism.
On Thursday the scene shifted somewhat, with both governments talking in terms of securing "clarity", which means a clear and unambiguous IRA commitment to decommission, by the agreement's May deadline.
If current pressures on the IRA were, most belatedly, to yield a commitment to the completion of decommissioning by May 22nd, even without any arms being put out of use to the satisfaction of Gen de Chastelain before next weekend, that would, of course, be a great step forward.
However, it would not necessarily resolve the problem created by David Trimble's post-dated resignation and February 12th UUP meeting.
Nevertheless, in what seems to me the improbable event of the UUP Council being faced with an unambiguous IRA commitment to decommission its arms within three months, that body might conceivably decide that Mr Trimble should remain as First Minister and thus allow the process to proceed.
But, even for an optimist like myself, it remains difficult at this point to conceive of the IRA bowing to Government pressure over what it already seems to have refused to its own Sinn Fein colleagues, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.
The only possible reason for believing that anything as unlikely as this will happen within a week is that the British government seems to have been persuaded, however reluctantly, to agree to spending further time and effort on it. Reflecting more generally on how we have found ourselves in this situation, it is perhaps worth remarking that in any negotiation the most difficult gap to bridge is that between two parties each of which is absolutely certain in its own mind that it has right on its side.
In that situation compromise comes to seem like betrayal of "principle". And rationality, in terms of each side calmly identifying and pursuing its interests through a compromise agreement, quickly flies out the window. And that's precisely where we find ourselves today in the Northern Ireland crisis.
For their part, unionists have every reason to believe they have right on their side in insisting on the decommissioning of IRA arms as a condition of Sinn Fein participation in the government. That has always been the position of all parties and government in these islands.
And it remains the case that no party in this State would form a government with Sinn Fein participation so long as the IRA retains its arms. How, then, can we reasonably expect or demand that the UUP do so in Northern Ireland?
But Sinn Fein for its part is equally convinced it has fulfilled all the terms of the Belfast Agreement. In that agreement, with other parties, Sinn Fein "reaffirm their commitment to the total disarmament of all paramilitary organisations".
It went on to "confirm their intention to continue to work constructively and in good faith with the Independent Commission, and to use any influence they may have, to achieve the decommissioning of all paramilitary arms within two years following endorsement in referendums North and South of the agreement and in the context of the implementation of the overall settlement". And Sinn Fein claims (a claim that does not seem to have been contested by either government or by any of the pro-agreement parties) that it has used "any influence they may have" to secure such an outcome, albeit without success so far. And, indeed, there seems to be little doubt that at this stage the Sinn Fein leaders would in fact dearly like to see action by the IRA Army Council that would secure the survival of the Executive in which several of them are serving.
What we do not know, of course, is what transpired between the Sinn Fein negotiators and the IRA Army Council two years ago in relation to the signing of the agreement.
DID the political wing, perhaps, oversell the agreement to their Army Council colleagues, telling them this formulation would enable them to leave decommissioning over until the reform of the police and the return of the British army to its old garrison role had been completed; a process which in April 1998 might well have seemed likely to be completed within the specified two-year period?
Did the Sinn Fein negotiators perhaps overoptimistically believe the signing of the agreement meant the UUP would be able to sell to its members and supporters participation in the Executive in advance of the start of actual decommissioning, and perhaps even in the absence of an IRA commitment to decommission?
We cannot know just what misunderstandings or wishful thinking may have influenced the various participants, and perhaps even the two governments, when during Holy Week two years ago they struggled desperately to find formulae to paper over deep differences between UUP and Sinn Fein.
The key to today's problem lies in this fudge in the agreement, the significance of which was generally overlooked in the euphoria surrounding its signing.
It seems clear this matter is not just one between two sets of political opponents. The real crisis lies elsewhere: within Sinn Fein/IRA itself. Fears within that organisation of a significant split if the leadership moves further and faster than its rank-and-file must be a very potent element in the present crisis. Therein lies the nub of the problem.