Mr Tony Blair, Mr Bertie Ahern, and Mr David Trimble faced pressing questions last night as Northern Ireland looked to a November election with its political process mired in what Mr Gerry Adams termed "profound difficulties".
At their Hillsborough press conference the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, said he had "flagged for some time" the problem over the "transparency" of IRA decommissioning which prompted yesterday's decision by Mr Trimble to halt the sequence of statements intended to end with an Ulster Unionist commitment to resume government with Sinn Féin following the November 26th poll. While others thought this issue capable of resolution, confided Mr Ahern, he had been "dubious."
This reinforced reports that Dublin knew on Monday night there was a problem. Which in turn begged the question - did Dublin share this knowledge with London and, if so, why did Downing Street proceed as planned with yesterday's 7 a.m. announcement that an election would be held?
A spokesman for the British Prime Minister insisted they only knew of the problem following Gen de Chastelain's report and Mr Trimble's explosive reaction. He added it could not have been otherwise since the general only witnessed the IRA decommissioning act yesterday morning.
Against that there are reports that Mr Blair's chief of staff, Mr Jonathan Powell, was engaged in efforts to contact Gen de Chastelain on Monday in an attempt to pin down the terms in which he might describe the decommissioning event. Senior Ulster Unionist sources confirmed that the Irish Government "was worried" about the issue on Monday night. But when asked why, given this was the case, that yesterday's "choreography" proceeded as planned, they replied that both governments "were obviously hoping they could sort it out." That in turn begs the question as to why Mr Trimble left it to chance and took matters on trust.
If the detail of the IRA's decommissioning act was of critical importance, unionists will be amazed that the UUP leader did not know it before committing himself to events yesterday intended to conclude a deal equal in scale to the Belfast Agreement itself.
Overshadowing all of these questions is one further one : when did the detail of a further decommissioning act overtake "acts of completion", the end of the IRA's war and the cessation of its paramilitary activities as the issue of the day?