With a statement expected imminently from the IRA, Political Correspondent Mark Hennessy looks at the issues that prevented agreement on decommissioning and the restoration of institutions after last year's Leeds Castle talks.
Standing in the Waterfront Hall in Belfast last December, Taoiseach Bertie Ahern and British prime minister Tony Blair were crestfallen.
For more than two months, since the Leeds Castle negotiations in September, they had worked to finally get the IRA to agree to decommissioning, Sinn Féin to join policing and unionists to work the institutions.
The effort came agonisingly close to success.
But the IRA's last-minute refusal to accept decommissioning being photographed and its refusal to make a copper-fastened commitment to end criminality destroyed the plan.
The IRA had been asked to accept the following text by the governments, that recognising "the need to uphold and not to endanger anyone's personal rights and safety, all IRA volunteers have been given specific instructions not to engage in any activity which might thereby endanger the new agreement".
The language was a step too far. In a statement issued on December 9th, the IRA said it had been prepared to instruct its members "not to engage in any activity which might thereby endanger that new agreement".
That commitment wasn't strong enough for both governments and the unionist parties.
Just weeks earlier, the Taoiseach had believed the IRA would face the challenge, so much so he acknowledged a final deal would require the release of the men who killed Det Garda Jerry McCabe in Adare, Co Limerick, in 1996.
His comments were seized upon by Fine Gael, the Garda Representative Association and others, leaving the Taoiseach badly mauled in the process.
The experience was a salutary one and the Taoiseach has made sure since then that Minister for Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern and Minister for Justice Michael McDowell were present during the crucial meetings with Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness over recent months.
This time around, the McCabe killers' release has not been promised, since Sinn Féin has finally grudgingly accepted it is not going to happen.
However, Sinn Féin's carefully orchestrated campaign to get the Shankill Road bomber Seán Kelly released has already met with success, following last night's decision by Northern Secretary Peter Hain to release him pending an adjudication of his appeal.
Kelly, who had been released under a licence granted as part of the Belfast Agreement, had been returned to jail last month, after Mr Hain accepted intelligence reports he was involved in paramilitary activity.
If the IRA had accepted decommissioning and an end to paramilitary/criminal activity in December, the British would have quickly removed remaining checkpoints and towers and cut troop numbers.
In addition, it would have removed from itself the oft-used power to suspend the Executive and Assembly, thus making it more difficult for unionists to collapse those bodies in future.
In turn, the IRA would have destroyed its weaponry by the end of December, verified by Gen John de Chastelain's independent decommissioning body.
The destruction would have been witnessed by two clergymen but also photographed by Gen John de Chastelain's colleague, the Finn Tauno Nieminen, though the photographs were only to have been shown to the governments and all of the political parties at the end of December once decommissioning had been completed.
The photographs were to have been published once the Executive was fully established, though this smacked too much of surrender for the IRA to accept.
If decommissioning had been completed by the end of the year, the British government would have passed emergency legislation to establish the Assembly in "shadow" form.
Sinn Féin and the Democratic Unionist Party would, by then, have nominated candidates for the First Minister and Deputy First Minister positions.
In January and February, the Independent Monitoring Commission was to have verified the complete end to all IRA activities, paramilitary or criminal. Once that hurdle was passed, Britain would have lifted the suspension on the Assembly that has been in place since October 2002.
By then, the pace of political activity should have quickened, supported by an agreement between the parties on the devolution from Westminster to Stormont of powers over criminal justice and policing.
The policing issue would not have been signed, sealed and delivered under the December accord, even if the rest of it had been passed without a hitch. Instead, Sinn Féin was to have agreed to call a special ardfheis early in 2005 "to decide on Sinn Féin's support for the new policing arrangements".
This would have been dependent upon the British and DUP agreeing to transfer justice and policing powers to Stormont "as soon as possible".
This agreement should have been in place by the time the Executive was re-established in early summer.
In March, the First Minister and Deputy First Minister were to have been confirmed by the Assembly, followed by a meeting of the North-South Ministerial Council. The British government was then to have introduced legislation giving effect to the transfer of devolved criminal justice and policing powers.
However, the date for the start of these powers was left vague in the December 8th proposed agreement, only coming into effect "once sufficient confidence has been established".
Besides accepting the transfer of criminal and policing powers to Stormont, the DUP was supposed to have agreed to "operate and participate" in the new arrangements, providing that the decommissioning and monitoring bodies had given the IRA clean bills of health.
Once devolution had been passed at Westminster, the DUP was supposed to have used its "best efforts to contribute towards building the community confidence which would be necessary to allow the Assembly to receive the new powers within the timescale envisaged by the British government".
Meanwhile, the Irish and British governments had also tabled a set of proposals in the talks running up to December to increase the collective responsibility of the Executive.
Under the proposals, the British would have amended the Northern Ireland Act 1998 to require Executive ministers to operate more as a team, rather than a group of individually appointed departmental heads.
Issues would have to be debated at full Executive meetings if they involved two or more ministers, rather than being dealt with at bilateral meetings.
In addition, the First Minister and Deputy First Minister were to be obliged to attend meetings of the North-South Ministerial Council and the British-Irish Council. Furthermore, the two ministers would also have been bound by law to send along a replacement to a meeting of either body if the relevant minister was not going to attend.
Today, the IRA will have to travel on ground it refused to go down last December, but this time without a guarantee that the other parts of the jigsaw so painstakingly constructed then can be made to fall into place.