It is now clear that Sinn Fein is determined to remain in the Northern negotiating process. That does not, of course, imply a commitment to accept whatever settlement might emerge by consensus between the parties representing a majority on each side of the community.
Through its objections to an essential building-block of North/South institutions - a Northern Ireland assembly - Sinn Fein has built into its stance an element which could provide an excuse for rejecting such a settlement, should such a rejection be the preferred reaction of the IRA army council. The form of amendment of Articles 2 and 3 could also provide a post facto excuse for a rejection of a settlement.
However, some of Gerry Adams's rhetoric has also seemed designed to leave open an eventual reluctant acceptance of a settlement - to be presented as a positive step towards ultimate Irish unity.
And even if the settlement is rejected by Sinn Fein/IRA, this does not imply a return to violence by the latter element of this two-headed organisation.
Indeed, if reluctant acceptance or a non-violent rejection of a settlement were not both seen by Sinn Fein/IRA as alternatives from the outset, it is difficult to make sense of Sinn Fein's role in the peace process.
For Gerry Adams and his colleagues could never have been under any illusion about the primacy of the consent principle in any settlement: John Hume left them in no doubt on this.
Moreover, they knew from the outset that the price of securing unequivocal British support for the principle of self-determination - the key to their cessation of violence and involvement in a talks process - was unambiguous commitment by the Irish Government to this self-determination separately by the electorates of Northern Ireland and the Republic.
If Sinn Fein/IRA had intended to reject with a return to violence any solution based on the consent principle, it is difficult to see why it would ever have become involved in a process which it knew must take this form.
For it must have known that if it restarted its campaign, most of any upsurge in political support it might have achieved in Northern Ireland during its cessation of violence would largely evaporate. And by taking part in talks it would also have created strains within the organisation.
It is now clear that Sinn Fein does not pose an obstacle to the negotiating process of the next three weeks. As an agreement is attainable without it, it also does not pose an obstacle to a settlement to be put to electorates North and South.
The problem of reaching agreement lies with the UUP, whose position is more difficult to read - perhaps because that party's leadership may not be clear itself where it stands.
David Trimble is in an unenviable position. On the one hand, he cannot want his party and himself to be seen by unionists and nationalists in the North, and by British, US and world opinion, to have been responsible for the failure of the peace process through intransigence.
For the settlement now on offer will secure formal acceptance of Northern Ireland's position within the UK by the Irish Government and by a majority of Northern nationalists unless and until a majority in the North favours political reunification of the island.
It would be extraordinarily damaging for the UUP to turn down such a settlement, damaging not just to the party but to the whole Northern unionist community from which it draws its support. Such an action would give Sinn F ein/IRA an enormous boost which would carry great dangers.
Yet, on the other side, David Trimble faces not just hostile DUP and UK Unionist parties but a strong dissident element within his own ranks.
This intransigence is much more marked amongst unionist politicians than amongst the unionist population - reflecting that a party without visionary leadership tends to follow its own activists, who often take extreme positions, rather than to reflect the more moderate views of the many people who vote for it.
While one must have sympathy with David Trimble's situation, he does not seem to have done as much as he might to gain for himself and his team more room for manoeuvre.
Normally, a politician in his position would seek to prepare for the negotiating crunch by concentrating his negative comments on proposals which either have not been made or which, if they have been made, are known to be negotiable.
Alternatively, on proposals made by his opponents which he knows will have to be conceded if any agreement is to be reached, he will express his opposition to aspects of these which he knows are negotiable.
What a skilled negotiator normally goes to great trouble to avoid is to reject flatly in advance proposals which he privately knows must eventually be conceded. Unhappily, what the UUP leadership has been doing since the distorted and politically-angled leak of the Framework Document in February 1995, has been to get itself firmly on unnecessary hooks about the form of North/South institutional links - hooks from which it will find it uncomfortable to detach itself at the final stage of talks.
Not until last Monday in Washington were there signs of awareness of the need to prepare the way for an agreement on North/South institutions.
Then, possibly after the Taoiseach's careful reformulation of the concept of institutions with executive powers as "implementation bodies", albeit with "real powers and real teeth", David Trimble reformulated his objections as being to "coercion, in terms not merely of reaching such agreement, but also in terms of the operation of any such relationship . . . any relationship that is developed has to be based on agreement, on co-operation, not on coercion".
I hope I am not reading too much into all this but it seems that this dual reformulation of the North/South bodies issue by the Taoiseach and the UUP leader has at last opened the way for possible agreement on the issue which was always going to be the thorniest one in the negotiating process.
However, in the Republic we also have our intransigents. During the last two weeks, we have seen several forms of opposition to changes in our Constitution which will be required to make it possible for the UUP to accept the kind of settlement which is now likely to emerge.
One strand of this opposition emerged within Fianna Fail in the form of objections by some deputies to the amendment of Article 2 as well as Article 3. There is nothing new in this reaction. Recognising the hang-ups which existed in his party on this particular issue, Albert Reynolds, when negotiating the Downing Street Declaration, seems to have persuaded John Major to leave him some leeway on this point.
This reticence about an amendment to Article 2 was clearly unlikely to survive a real negotiation with unionist politicians.
An agreement involving power-sharing within the North and effective North/ South bodies with implementation powers - together with a radical move towards equality and police reform - could not be easily sold by a unionist leader to his electorate if the Republic were to continue to claim the North as part of its "national territory".
It is hard to believe that any serious constitutional politician in this State expects the Taoiseach, after five years unremitting work by his predecessors and himself, to let the UUP off the hook now by refusing to modify the wording of Article 2 if that proves to be the key to UUP agreement.
It is highly disturbing that deputies like Conor Lenihan, Seamus Kirk and Liam Aylward, as well as Albert Reynolds, in a subtly-presented but clearly opportunistic radio interview on Friday week, should now be raising such a dangerous hare.
A further and quite different hare has been raised by Harry Blaney in a proposal for two referendums following the conclusion of an agreement: the first to be on the Agreement itself, and the second to be on the changes in our Constitution.
This is a not-too-subtle effort to sabotage any settlement, for Harry Blaney knows as well as I do that a postponement of our constitutional changes until after a referendum on an agreement would be used remorselessly by Paisley and McCartney to secure a rejection of any agreement by unionists on the basis that they must not buy a pig in a poke.
I am afraid that in the weeks ahead we can expect an intensification of such sabotage attempts by people in or on the margins of the political process. If so, they will be defeated by the vast majority of patriotic politicians in all parties, and by the electorate in our State which desires to contribute to the resolution of the long-running tragedy of Northern Ireland.