Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern have set a September deadline for the latest attempt to restore the Northern Ireland Assembly and a power-sharing Executive, writes Frank Millar, London Editor
But are they serious? Can they succeed? And, if not, who will win the next phase of Northern Ireland's all-too-familiar blame game?
Scepticism certainly filled the air around Lancaster House last Friday when the British Prime Minister and the Taoiseach presumed to call a halt to the North's political drift. Sinn Féin chairman Mitchel McLaughlin caught it perfectly, reminding us that the two premiers had imposed such deadlines before. This one too, he suggested, would pass by unless the Democratic Unionist Party entered a direct engagement with republicans.
Sceptical journalists also allowed that it might suit the Sinn Féin chairman to strike this regretful pose, lamenting a "wasted opportunity", while the Rev Ian Paisley divined at least the outline of a process he might find agreeable.
The expression "softly, softly, catchee monkey" sprang to mind. Then, too, "come into my parlour said the spider to the fly" - words long associated with Dr Paisley's past refusal of every enticement to enter into dialogue with nationalist Ireland. Had the Big Man been hooked?
Certainly there is reason to wish to trust the apparent determination of Mr Blair and Mr Ahern to bring the present talks to the point of decision.
Out of the mouths of Gerry Adams or Martin McGuinness unionists (and others) may understandably detect menace and threat. Yet it is surely objectively true that "if the causes of conflict are not removed, the potential for conflict remains".
Many, indeed, fear it must be the more so now that the centre ground in Northern Ireland politics has been eroded and unionists and nationalists have elected to the extremes.
This is not to rail (foolishly, as it would be) against the electorates for their lack of wisdom in choosing Dr Paisley and Mr Adams over David Trimble and Mark Durkan. It is to observe, however, that there are dangers as well as opportunities presented by the electoral triumph of two parties seemingly incapable of being outflanked on the right or left.
The danger is obvious; that Northern Ireland continues in a self-selecting apartheid state, each side retrenching behind the "peace" lines which still define the ghetto, with new generations of loyalists and republicans being raised in a continuing atmosphere of sectarian antagonism and mistrust.
Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern are fully seized of this real and present danger. Hence their focus on the opportunity presented by last November's election - the capacity of the DUP and Sinn Féin not only to make a deal but to make it stick. The present indications are that they intend over two or three weeks in September to bring Messrs Adams and Paisley to the point of delivery. But can they succeed?
There is at least one indication that the British government and Sinn Féin may be misreading the DUP's own assessment of its position. In the margins of Lancaster House, British and Sinn Féin sources questioned the widespread assumption that the DUP will not want to deal until it first secures its ascendancy over the Ulster Unionists in the British general election expected next summer. To the contrary, they suggested, the DUP now needs to target those unionists still loyal to Mr Trimble and presumably still up for an agreement. In fairness it must be reported that some leading members of the DUP give credence to this analysis in private.
However, it would seem to ignore polling data, strongly reinforced by the latest "Life and Times" survey from Queen's University, suggesting that Protestant voters (and large numbers of Catholics) are relatively content with direct rule and far from impatient to see devolution restored. It is also to disregard the conventional wisdom that some Trimble voters defected to the DUP because he was seen as weak in his negotiations with republicans, and that many traditional DUP supporters were primarily motivated by the desire to bring down the existing Belfast Agreement.
In any event, we know for certain that Dr Paisley and his deputy, Peter Robinson, believe they have a mandate to hang tough in their demands for IRA acts of completion. They need expect no punishment from unionist voters if they show themselves no pushovers in the negotiations to come. And they would seem to have the added assurance that their upward trajectory is anyway guaranteed by Sinn Féin's total eclipse of the SDLP.
The real danger for the DUP is that it might not yet sufficiently grasp the nature of this process or Sinn Féin's mastery of it. Certainly they have been warned that the IRA will not be jumping through hoops while the DUP leadership sit on their hands and in judgment. That is why Sinn Féin rejected the earlier proposed two-stage process. And while party sources indicate flexibility about the stages leading to the restoration of the institutions of government, the expectation is of parallel moves showing unionist good faith to be finally proven well in advance of the general election.
Last November, Blair, Ahern and Trimble signed off on a deal with Sinn Féin envisaging all-round acts of completion and the devolution of policing powers over a period of two to three years.
Crucially, it presupposed the prior restoration of a power-sharing government. Asked if the same deal could be delivered even over a year in the absence of a fully functioning Executive, Sinn Féin sources give an emphatic "No".
Not that any side will be bringing a "No" to the talks table come September. Indeed it should be allowed that Sinn Féin and the IRA might choose to do what officials call "the big thing", so rendering the DUP's decision that much easier.
That said, making life easier for Dr Paisley is hardly how Mr Adams sees his role. In which case the DUP might find itself in Mr Trimble's old role, struggling with the blame game.
And it is upon the outcome of that depends whether, and how, Mr Blair and Mr Ahern can make good their threat to proceed by way of an alternative agenda.