THE status of the IRA ceasefire remained in doubt last night as the London emergency services began to clear up the rubble at Canary Wharf. A section of the IRA had certainly planted the bomb; what was not clear was if that organisation had split, with a militant faction outflanking the supporters of Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness.
The announcement that the 18 month IRA ceasefire was at an end came as a complete surprise to the two governments. And senior republican sources said that neither Mr Gerry Adams nor Mr Martin McGuinness had been consulted in advance. In a statement, Mr Adams expressed "regret" that the opportunity for peace had foundered and he declared that Sinn Fein's peace strategy was still his "personal priority". Significantly, he did not condemn the action.
The prospect of an IRA split was aired last week by former US Senator George Mitchell, who said frustration within the IRA ranks over the lack of political progress might bring this about. And the RUC Chief Constable, Sir Hugh Annesley, predicted that any resumption of violence would probably take the form of a bombing campaign in Britain.
Even if the bombing was the work of a disaffected faction within the IRA, it will have done tremendous damage to the prospect for early all party talks. The use of explosives in this way will confirm unionists in their belief that the IRA must decommission all weapons before Sinn Fein can be admitted to the negotiating table. And the British government will have to show that it does not buckle under pressure.
Traditional thinking within the IRA has equated pressure on the British government with political progress within Northern Ireland and, within months of the ceasefire being declared, there were those who urged a bombing campaign in London as a means of moving quickly to the negotiating table. In recent months, IRA militants have argued that the ceasefire was, in itself, a victory for the British government.
The longer it held, the more difficult it would be to resume the campaign. And, for so long as the British government was confident it would hold, there would be no appetite to meet the demands of republicans and to move into all party negotiations.
The failure of the ceasefire can be traced to a deep rooted unwillingness by both unionist and republican politicians to abandon traditional mind sets and to move towards a generous political settlement, involving the consent of all parties. This week saw the two governments deeply divided on the mechanisms required to bring the parties to the table.
The Ulster Unionist Party leader, David Trimble, was still talking about an elected assembly: John Hume and Gerry Adams had made it clear that nationalists would not participate in such an assembly. And, with John Major's majority at Westminster dwindling, there was little likelihood of the unionists being dragooned into early all party talks.
Intransigence existed on both sides. The alternative way into all party talks, through some advance decommissioning of IRA arms, had been rejected out of hand by Mr Adams and by the IRA. They held to that position for more than six months as Mr Major demanded a gesture, at least, before he would call unionists to the negotiating table.
When total stalemate had been reached, the Americans were called in. Having studied the situation, and balked to the parties, Senator Mitchell concluded that the IRA was totally intransigent on this matter and he proposed a system of six principles which would effectively eliminate the IRA.
The unilateral rejection of these proposals by Mr Major bin favour of an electoral process distracted public attention from the real difficulties Mr Adams would have experienced in getting the IRA to sign up to its own demise and, at the same time, decommission its weapons in parallel with political negotiations. Those proposals, in themselves, might have been sufficient to split the IRA if they were implemented.
As Mr Major stood accused by Mr Adams of damaging the peace process by ignoring the Mitchell report in favour of a unionist agenda, Sinn Fein was toughening up its own approach. Within the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, the party walked away from a formulation, which had taken a year to draft, designed to recognise the consent of unionists to any political settlement. The party was moving backwards into a deeply entrenched position.
John Bruton has described the bombing as "an enormous setback". And it is. Even the hard men in the IRA recognise that there must be an eventual accommodation with the unionists on this island. And so, in spite of this bomb in London, all roads still lead - eventually - to talks. It is a time for cool heads and wise reflection. The primary task of the two governments still remains to get nationalists and unionists to the negotiating table.