Despite the threat of the IRA statement it is still 80 per cent certain that the organisation remains committed to the peace process, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor.
Ian Paisley jnr described Wednesday night's hardline IRA statement as republicans "throwing their toys out of the pram". There is an element of truth in that characterisation of petulant Provos but it must also be remembered that life can be made unbearable if this particular baby doesn't get its way.
Which is why we must heed Mr Gerry Adams when he warns about the potential "transient" or temporary nature of the peace process. Equally, we must heed the IRA when in a second statement issued last night it warns we must treat its statement with the utmost seriousness.
The British and Irish governments, acting like loving but firm parents, say they are not prepared to give in to this republican tantrum. Just like Mr Paisley jnr they view the statement as an extreme tactical gambit to divert attention away from the political crisis caused by the alleged IRA £26.5 million Northern Bank robbery.
The governments' line is that the solution to everyone's problems is simple and the same as it has been for months: let the IRA disarm and end all activity including criminality and then we are back in business because, after all, even Ian Paisley has said he will share power in such an eventuality - although maybe not quite immediately. The IRA is now the sole block to a deal, they argue.
The republican responding tactic, as perceived, is simple. If the governments and the parties are going to "beat up on" republicans, to use the American argot favoured yesterday by Mr Gerry Adams, then they are going to respond in kind by defending their position loudly, stubbornly and rather threateningly. It's the way it has always been played. Before the IRA statement republicans were taking hits from all sides, and there was no sign of a let-up. Moreover, the Independent Monitoring Commission yesterday presented the British and Irish governments with its report on the bank job, which is likely to recommend sanctions against Sinn Féin.
Hugh Orde and Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair continue to insist that the IRA carried out the robbery. The Taoiseach and British Prime Minister equally continue to state that the Sinn Féin political leadership knew in advance of the robbery, which, almost more damagingly than the robbery, questions the very credibility of the two republican icons, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Adams. If their halos slip too much we are all in trouble.
Politics, because of the logjam, must remain in the doldrums until well after the British general election, expected in May. And for all that time the IRA and Sinn Féin would have been forced to rest shamefacedly on the back foot.
This is not the way P. O'Neill likes to do business, which explains the strength and disquieting tone of his IRA statement withdrawing all previous offers to decommission and end activity, and rejecting all allegations that the IRA is involved in criminality.
So, with one statement warning about the IRA not being prepared to remain "quiescent" - a loaded word with disturbing connotations - all the other protagonists must stand back a bit and reflect on the import of these words. They carry the old combined threat of the Armalite and the ballot box, which should give pause for thought.
It will be the autumn at the earliest before the next serious attempt to crack a comprehensive deal. The IRA by its statement has ensured that when negotiations resume then, or later, Sinn Féin, with the benefit of the shadow of the IRA behind it, will be able to act just as macho as the governments and the other parties as they continue to blame republicans for the political stalemate.
That's tactics for you. But at least if that is the situation it is manageable. It means - as Hugh Orde, Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair believe - that while the IRA has the capability to return to "war", it doesn't have the intention. It should also mean, as stated in the IRA statement, that it still wants the peace process "to succeed".
Sinn Féin, in addition, would stand to lose some of the huge political gains it has made so painstakingly in the North and South.
So, to play a percentage game, despite the threat of the IRA statement it is still 80 per cent certain that the organisation remains committed to the peace process. But there is a 20 per cent danger that such is the unpredictability of the process that the peace gradually could unwind.
We are told from informed sources that there are tensions within the broader republican movement. After the collapse of the December deal the rein on the hard men was loosened, accounting for the robbery and the increase in "punishment" shootings. That, short of reactivating a fuller campaign of violence, was to send a message to Dublin and London that the republican commitment to the peace must not be taken for granted. Such hard-balling is not unusual at times of political crisis or stalemate but it is always worrying.
Republicans were also making the point that they believed a good deal was spurned by the DUP in particular, a point Mr Adams adverted to yesterday. "There are anti-peace process elements out there. There are people who believe that peace is the humiliation of others. There are people who believe that the only time you can have peace is if one side lies down," he said.
That remark should not be disregarded. It's an obvious reference to Dr Paisley's repeated comments about the need to humiliate republicans. The message was simple: if Ian Paisley truly wants a deal he must understand he is not going to get one by playing the "croppies lie down" line.
The situation right now does not seem as perilous as before the breakdown of the first IRA ceasefire in 1996, but equally there is always the danger that things could unravel. There is a terrible twist here: the IRA caused the most current problems by the robbery and is now issuing threatening statements to try to solve that crisis.
At his press conference yesterday Mr Adams refused to offer any interpretation of the IRA statement. He was quizzed from different angles but he just refused to say whether there was a danger of the IRA returning to war. "Our focus is in preventing that," was all he would say.
He was also resistant to providing some explanation for the most incendiary phrase he employed yesterday that the "peace process could be as transient as [ Mr Blair's] time in Downing Street".
Eventually, he elaborated, explaining that he recently made the same point to the British Prime Minister in something of a brief Irish history tutorial. "I said these words precisely to Mr Blair because the British government's role in this island has been shameful. For periods there have been benign British prime ministers who have temporarily for a period dealt with some of these issues, whether they were agrarian issues or issues of emancipation or rights, or whether it was other matters.
"And those people came into Downing Street and went out of Downing Street and because the cause of the conflict has not been tackled the peace phase was as temporary as their time in Downing Street." Mr Adams from time to time likes to quote the line of Harold Macmillan that the determining factor in politics is "events, dear boy, events", as in there is no accounting for the unpredictable.
For the moment it seems the peace is safe but if the political stalemate rolls on indefinitely then history - just like the IRA in recent days - tells us there are dangers of a return to violence.