In the immediate aftermath of Thursday's events at Stormont, it is not easy to determine whether these events face us just with a serious setback, or with an actual failure of the peace process. What is at issue here is not simply a question of whether a few months' further delay might enable the remaining gap between the Sinn Fein/IRA and UUP positions on the relative timing of decommissioning and the establishment of the executive to be bridged.
If that were the only issue, then there are at least some signs that earlier fears of a delayed solution being rendered impossible by a deterioration in the security situation during the summer months may prove pessimistic. For there appears to be a much more relaxed atmosphere in the North this mid-July than seemed possible several weeks ago.
This detente has been greatly facilitated by the orderly manner in which the Orange Order handled Drumcree and the parades in Belfast and elsewhere. And despite the verbal acrimony of Thursday's political exchanges, the breakdown in the negotiations has in reality had a softer landing than many thought likely.
But there are two issues that could now cast fresh shadows over the future of the process.
The first of these is that the Patten report on policing will now be published before negotiations can resume. And while the IRA may have been persuaded 10 days ago to respond to a putative mid-July formation of the executive by an early initiation of decommissioning, it might be difficult to revive this commitment in the aftermath of a Patten report that fell short of unrealistic republican demands for an entirely new police force.
And, on the other side, anything more than a minimalist proposal for modest changes in the RUC - and the Patten report is bound to go well beyond that - is liable to spark off a negative unionist reaction that could make an autumn compromise on the decommissioning issue more difficult.
A second new problem may have been raised by the somewhat desperate unilateral move made by the British government last Wednesday night in a futile attempt to reverse the UUP movement towards a negative response to the formation of the executive.
This involved amendments to the government's own Bill before the Commons. One of these, strongly opposed by the Irish Government and the SDLP as well as Sinn Fein, involved a requirement for publication by Gen de Chastelain of a specified decommissioning timetable not provided for in the Good Friday agreement.
The imposition of such a timetable would convert decommissioning into a precondition for executive participation. That would seriously prejudice the selling of decommissioning by Sinn Fein to its activists, and to IRA members, as a voluntary act. And, whether we like it or not, that appears to be the only context within which the IRA can be persuaded to commence the process of abandoning its weapons.
Persisting with this unwise amendment in the now-delayed debate on the British Bill could prejudice what appears to have been an IRA commitment to voluntary decommissioning in the immediate aftermath of the establishment of an executive. On the other hand, if this amendment is now dropped, this could provide fresh ammunition to those in the UUP who are determined to block agreement on an executive being formed in advance of decommissioning.
This aspect of the decommissioning issue has raised in an acute form the precise nature of the relationship between the IRA and Sinn Fein; a matter about which a good deal has recently been written and said, and concerning which the two governments are said to have contradicted each other recently.
The apparent contradiction between the governments' views on this issue seems to me to have arisen ultimately from their understandable reluctance to admit the reality of overlapping membership between the IRA and Sinn Fein.
This is a matter about which few people in either part of the country who have any understanding of the security situation have any doubts, but which the governments prefer not to address publicly.
On the one hand, the governments have been reluctant to admit they have been negotiating with people who are members of the IRA Army Council. And, on the other, explicit acceptance of this reality would have the inconvenience of making liars out of some Sinn Fein leaders who have felt it necessary, when interviewed on the matter, to deny their membership of that body, admission of which still carries a jail sentence.
But it is not only the governments that have dodged this issue. Throughout the past five years public understanding of the reality of overlapping IRA and Sinn Fein membership has been dangerously obscured by the reluctance of most of the media to face the issue. From the moment Section 31 was revoked, permitting radio and television appearances by Sinn Fein leaders, interviewers accepted without significant demur denials of IRA membership by those concerned.
The media have in fact misleadingly treated these Sinn Fein spokesmen as if they were ordinary democratic politicians. Such politicians, while often doing their best to avoid or evade awkward questions, are ultimately too concerned for their reputations to risk direct untruths.
By contrast, any Sinn Fein spokesman who may also be a member of the IRA is constrained to lie about this relationship by virtue of the fact that membership of that organisation is a criminal offence in the law of both parts of this island.
I hold the view that in these circumstances what such interviewers of Sinn Fein spokesmen were ethically required to do from the moment the Section 31 ban was lifted was to preface interviews with Sinn Fein spokesmen by stating they were deliberately not going to put to them this question about IRA membership because, if in fact the interviewee in question was a member of the IRA, he or she would, of course, have to lie about the matter in order to avoid going to prison.
By its failure to adopt some such procedure from the outset, and by allowing denials of IRA membership frequently to pass without significant challenge, the media thoughtlessly conspired to convey a dangerously false impression, viz that, as journalists, they accepted that there was no overlap in membership between Sinn Fein and the IRA. And in this way they seriously misled public opinion.
It is this overlapping membership that explains the nature of the tension between Sinn Fein and the IRA, within what has always been a single organisation. For, clearly and understandably, there are, and since the start of the peace process have been, divided views within the IRA on the peace process.
In the aftermath of the one-third drop in Sinn Fein electoral support that followed the signature of the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985, some of the leaders of the "republican movement" began to take the view that the dual "Armalite and ballot box" strategy could not succeed.
John Hume had a crucial indirect role in this process, helping Gerry Adams to clarify his own thinking, as well as persuading the British government to present its position in relation to Northern Ireland in terms that were consistent with the idea of Irish self-determination.
By 1993 many of Gerry Adams's colleagues had become convinced of the ultimate futility of violence and of the reality that its abandonment was a precondition of progress both towards the expansion of support for Sinn Fein North or South of the Border and towards bringing the two parts of the island together.
But, inevitably, others in the IRA were less convinced that this was the only or the best way forward. Clearly, a long internal debate ensued, at the end of which the more political members of the IRA won a most reluctant consent on the part of some of their colleagues to the initiation of the peace process.
What we cannot know is the nature of the assurances this politically-orientated part of the IRA leadership had to give their colleagues in order to secure their reluctant permission to take this path.
Recently the two governments have apparently become convinced that the IRA is prepared to offer some kind of assurance on decommissioning in the immediate aftermath of the formation of an executive. But any such assurance was clearly tightly surrounded by conditions, not merely as to such action being conditional on prior establishment of the executive, but also as to the need to preserve the voluntary character of the decommissioning action to be taken.
And this latter IRA requirement was clearly incompatible with the imposition of a prearranged timetable, to be imposed by legislative action in the British parliament.
Even if David Trimble himself grasps the subtle rationale of the IRA approach to this matter - and he may or may not have developed sufficient empathy with his Sinn Fein interlocutors to have done so - most of his party members are ill-attuned to the "nod and wink" approach to decommissioning adopted by the IRA.
The stereotype of straight-talking unionists, ill-disposed to constructive ambiguities of the kind needed to oil the workings of this kind of negotiation, is probably near enough to the reality of the UUP Assembly party membership. Plain speaking, rather than diplomatic hints and subtleties, is what members of the majority community in Northern Ireland expect, and are disposed to demand of interlocutors.
And these deep-seated attitudinal differences between the two communities in Northern Ireland and between their leaderships still stand in the way of an agreement that could bring permanent peace to that part of our island.