WE HAVE had no new dawn at the Northern talks, simply a flicker of light in the east that outlined an arid landscape strewn with probable pitfalls. Yet the accord, however temporary, between the SDLP and the UUP carries great significance.
It plainly proved that the dynamic for co-operation and progress is, on balance, enhanced when parties are brought face to face in a setting designated for dialogue. Although it took endurance and patience, it could not have come about at all if either party to it had opted for abstentionism.
It secured the future of the talks process in the medium term and reinforced the basic case for talking. It lifted the immediate threat of loyalist paramilitary violence. It enabled the whole process to inch forward towards engaging with real issues. Perhaps above all, it salvaged some communal hope in the political process.
Negotiations will always involve tactical moves, and it can be accepted that this development involved a tactical ploy by Mr David Trimble's UUP.
It took his increasingly bitter adversaries on the hardline wing of unionism by surprise. The Rev Ian Paisley, it appears, was on his way to the airport en route to Westminster when the joint proposal was unveiled, and he was hurriedly recalled.
Mr Trimble himself had at that stage vacated the field and gone to London, leaving his lieutenant, Mr John Taylor, to field the fall-out from the demarche and mop up the opposition. It was a matter of considerable conjecture on Monday night as to whether Mr Trimble's absence denoted a lack of moral fibre or an overweening confidence in the preplanned coup.
It won some moral gloss for Mr Trimble in terms of saving the loyalist ceasefire and restoring apparent progress to the stalled talks process.
But the main strategic advantage perceived by the UUP in deciding on this tactical manoeuvre may have related to the danse macabre involving the IRA.
Mr Trimble wrong-footed the planners of the Lisburn barracks bombing in a number of ways. For the moment, the republican line that the talks process is going nowhere has been confounded. Moreover, the limited forward march of the process, bringing with it the loyalist politicians, will give the UUP leader more control over the conditions and caveats to be applied to the eventual inclusion of Sinn Fein in the talks.
The further the talks advance, the stronger will be Mr Trimble's inevitable argument that republicans have much ground to make up and must conform to special and stringent conditions. Those terms will consequently become more unacceptable to the republican movement.
To achieve this considerable tactical advantage, Mr Trimble has had to concede a shift towards the concept put forward by Senator George Mitchell - that mechanisms be considered to achieve progress on decommissioning "alongside" negotiations.
It is a calculated concession by Mr Trimble. On the one hand, the Mitchell proposal was clearly drawn up on the assumption that Sinn Fein would be involved in those negotiations. On the other hand, the UUP leader may now consider that the terms he can insist upon will be so repugnant to Sinn Fein that the organisation will reject them.
Republicans are faced with several choices in response, most of them unpalatable and risk-laden. They could call his bluff by declaring another ceasefire, which, if suitably framed, would compel the UUP leader to expose his precise terms for Sinn Fein gentry.
If these indeed prove unreasonable, pressure would revert upon the SDLP and the Government to take up the cudgels for Sinn Fein - possibly reconstructing a form of the so-called pan-nationalist front perceived by, and so detested by unionists.
The IRA could alternatively respond with more violence - obviously a much more perilous option, and one which would devalue its already ephemeral moral argument disastrously, especially if the political talks appear to be gaining momentum.
MOST likely, the republican movement will adopt await and see policy, anticipating that the talks will soon run into further quicksand and squander their new found transfusion of credibility. At least, with this option, an interval of relative stability might be anticipated.
During that time, the two governments would have to consider how they can reinforce the slender element of promise now restored to the talks process. The most radical measure they could adopt would be to resile from, or in some way modify, the rigid conditions they have adopted in regard to the inclusion of Sinn Fein.
It is admittedly difficult to see how the ceasefire condition can be abandoned - it can certainly be argued that it has very wide public endorsement.
But the least part of the difficulty about the ceasefire demand concerns an actual ceasefire - more problematic, in republican eyes, is how it would be reacted to.
It will be recalled that the last ceasefire endured 17 months in the face of an onslaught of scepticism, demands for absolute guarantees of certainty and permanence, and unremitting reluctance to move politically. The anticipation of an augmented rerun of the same attitudes must militate against those within the IRA (if they exist) who argue for a further cessation.
Yet the only real test of the decommissioning proposals and mechanisms, by definition, must come from the inclusion of Sinn Fein, and through it, somehow, the IRA. Equally, the efforts to find a political settlement must at some stage and in some manner embrace Sinn Fein as well as all other parties.
If Mr Trimble's minor coup has, in reality, further deferred or discouraged the inclusion of Sinn Fein - or is used to that end - then it truly deserves to be described as a false dawn.
