TO RISK the shipwreck of the Northern Ireland negotiations on the rock of decommissioning would seem to confirm the primacy of the military over the political and to demonstrate the futility of dialogue, the Tanaiste, Mr Spring, warned.
To insist on an approach to decommissioning which disregarded the wisdom of the International Body's Report would in essence guarantee that decommissioning would never happen.
Unionists ought to draw confidence from the position in which they started negotiations. Of course, it would be wrong and pointless to assure them that reaching agreement will not involve hard choices on their part - just as it would be wrong and pointless to offer such assurances to nationalists and republicans.
The shared principles on which the British and Irish governments have agreed and which command broad support in both jurisdictions, imply that serious and meaningful change within Northern Ireland and in its wider relationships, is necessary if, for the first time, its institutions are to reflect and accommodate the diverse identities and aspirations of the two communities. Without that there can be no real stability.
Everyone involved in the search for peace needed to ask themselves which was better, the sterile certainty of political failure, and the vacuum it would create, or the constructive adventure of political negotiation, which offered the hope of a better future for all. The Irish Government, for its part, stood firmly on the side of engagement and dialogue.
Mr Spring said it was obvious that one of the main casualties of IRA bombs had been the traditional ideology of a united Ireland itself. But the principle of consent in Ireland was a coin with two sides. Unionists failure to acknowledge its relevance to nationalists in Northern Ireland was one of the strongest barriers in the way of a new political dispensation, where the unionist position would be protected by the agreement of all.
"We have sought to ensure a bridge for Sinn Fein out of the wilderness of their self imposed isolation and into the democratic arena. To date the IRA have not allowed them to cross that bridge. It is not clear if they ever will. But it remains there for them."
Those in government must not in their anger or despair gratuitously slam any door. Wiser counsels must one day prevail and it would be foolish to foreclose the capacity of our democratic system as a whole to respond wisely in turn.