When you are in a hole the first thing is to stop digging. The challenge now for the pro-agreement elements in all parties must be to construct a way out of the hole opened up by the determined digging of the Ulster Unionist Council and of the army council of the IRA, with the unwitting assistance of the Secretary of State.
Just as unionists have had to learn that the RUC is not their police force, they will have to learn that the Belfast Agreement and its institutions do not belong to them alone, to be switched on and off at their say-so. The institutions belong to the overwhelming majority of people North and South who voted for them and who want to see them in operation.
It would be a huge mistake for unionists to regard the present impasse as an opportunity to roll back the agreement, yet this is clearly the game plan for the strong rejectionist faction in the Ulster Unionist Council, a faction which the Unionist leadership appears to continue to comfort rather than to confront. Decommissioning can be achieved only if the parties work together; it will never be achieved if it is used as a stick to attack and exclude the republican movement.
As regards the republican movement it is hard to understand how it could have believed that its perfunctory engagement with the de Chastelain commission from November to January could have satisfied the commission or the two governments to which the commission reports.
This monumental failure, this indifference to engagements made, expectations created and to political realities deeply damaged confidence in the republican movement's capacity to sustain their role in the process.
Confidence grew again with the publication of the further de Chastelain report last Friday evening and with the conclusion by the general that following further discussions with the IRA representative the substance of its mandate to oversee decommissioning had the real prospect of being fulfilled.
Then on Tuesday, just as the case for the immediate restoration of the institutions was to be made by the Taoiseach and the SDLP, the IRA army council threw away any chance by withdrawing all contact with and all propositions made to de Chastelain.
By so doing the republican movement has undermined the efforts to restore the institutions and is in full breach of its commitment in the agreement to work "constructively and in good faith with the Independent Commission".
The Secretary of State, for his part, has made a faulty judgment in suspending the institutions. He set his face resolutely against the SDLP and others who have opposed suspension, yet now that he has brought it about he does not know how to proceed.
His attitude to and handling of the de Chastelain report of Friday raises many questions. When I met him on Friday afternoon I made clear our opposition to suspension. I argued that the institutions should not be set aside to accommodate one party leader. I argued that suspension would strengthen the hand of anti-agreement unionists and would reverse progress on decommissioning.
The people of Ireland, North and South, believe the institutions of the agreement belong to them. By his unilateral suspension the Secretary of State has challenged this with action redolent of the days of empire.
The SDLP is in the business of getting the agreement back into operation. The strength of the agreement is that its centre of gravity is right down the middle of the two aspirations. The Secretary of State has disturbed that equilibrium.
Unionists and republicans have in turn taken up positions from which they demand that the rest of us who signed up to the agreement rescue them. The agreement was never designed to protect leaders from parties any more than it was designed to accommodate leaders with paramilitary wings.
TIME is now of the essence. There is little that a new review can cover that has not already been gone over in the Mitchell review. Gen de Chastelain has hinted that without a start to decommissioning he may not be minded to stay.
The first marches of the season are eight weeks away. We were told last year after Hillsborough that republicans find concessions most difficult at Easter, only to hear unionists at the end of June tell us that they find compromise impossible as they move into July.
What is needed is to create the conditions for an immediate and full exploration of the last IRA offer. Republicans must resume contact with Gen de Chastelain and explain their propositions. What is the "context" referred to, what does "putting beyond use" mean, what is the approach to timing?
While the process would be led by the Independent Commission and the sufficiency of its outcome would be judged by it alone, there would need to be adequate communication to the two governments and to the parties to maintain confidence in the process.
In parallel the British government must ensure that it, too, will live up to its commitments. That means lifting the suspension. It would be intolerable if unionists were to boycott the institutions while the process went ahead.
It also means action on a number of other fronts. We still await progress on demilitarisation. Further progress on policing is overdue including the appointment of an internationally respected oversight commissioner. There is still no sight of the Criminal Justice Review, now almost four months late. Many will also be deeply concerned about the approach being taken to parades and to the marching season.
If the above proves impossible either because of republican refusal to clarify or unionist refusal to respond, the two governments will inevitably be required to make a judgment on how to proceed and to present that judgment to all parties, but especially to the Ulster Unionists and to Sinn Fein; not for discussion or negotiation but as their considered requirement for the future operation of the political institutions.
Such a call by the two governments may be the only course of action which will preserve the integrity of the agreement and remove the recurrent use of veto which both Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionists have imposed on the entire process from its beginning.
We cannot afford any more vetoes or any more mistakes as we seek a way out of the present impasse.
Seamus Mallon is Deputy First Minister of the suspended Northern Ireland Executive