It is not a paradox that Sinn Fein, through its party chairman, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, and the wilder realms of unionism represented by Mr Bob McCartney and the Rev Ian Paisley should be at one in denouncing the continued presence of the political parties linked to the loyalist paramilitaries at the multi party talks in the North. Sinn Fein desperately wants justification for its own exclusion; the McCartney/Paisley axis know that their claim to speak for non establishment unionism is undermined by the fresher voices of the UDP and the PUP, and that the best way to end the loyalist ceasefire is to remove them from the political process.
Both are wrong in trying to precipitate a further disruption in the efforts to negotiate a settlement - and Dr Paisley is doubly wrong because he himself has played the paramilitary card in his time. The paramilitaries he went to some trouble to be photographed with went on to emulate the IRA in cold blooded slaughter and mayhem. Those who are now, by an acknowledged link, represented at the talks have made the difficult transition from violence to politics and have stuck to the ceasefire they called in 1994.
Not even Mr McCartney's witty reference to the tooth fairy as the putative violator if the paramilitaries themselves are not responsible can wish away the fact that the Combined Loyalist Military Command has not risen to the IRA's bait and returned to war. It is right to give the benefit of the doubt in a situation where no one can say with certainty that violations have not been the work of individual terrorists.
More than this: the UDP and PUP representatives have won a measure of respect for their willingness to enter into dialogue and address the issues which will need to be settled in a way that other unionists have not yet done. That is not to say that they will continue to be so reasonable when negotiations actually begin, but at this difficult stage their contribution has been steadying and purposeful, especially in the face of IRA provocation which is obviously intended to destroy the marginal gains of so many months of diplomatic and political effort.
What Mr Gerry Adams, Mr McLaughlin, Mr McCartney and Dr Paisley refuse, in their various ways, to recognise is that for talks of any kind to begin there must be a margin of flexibility. That was very much the point of the efforts of the Dublin and London governments to find a way for Sinn Fein to enter the talks. Sinn Fein now makes much of the failure in London to respond to the IRA ceasefire, but forgets its own refusal to contemplate any move on the decommissioning issue and the half heartedness and belatedness of its acceptance of the Mitchell Principles.
Mr Adams has a credibility problem, compounded by the end of the IRA ceasefire last February, and must accept that few people believe him outside his own party. That was not the case before the ceasefire ended, but he is now suffering the consequences of trying to impose a nationalist consensus on his own terms. It is still a fact that the political process needs Sinn Fein, just as it needs the loyalists. What Mr Adams, or the nebulous people behind him, have not acknowledged is that they too need the political process. As of now, the loyalists are aware of their need. The hope must be that they continue to be so.