The significance of the IRA's statement is that nothing has been withdrawn, writes Frank Millar, London Editor
Many members of the DUP Executive were reportedly delighted on Wednesday morning when the Rev Ian Paisley told them there was no deal to restore power-sharing government with Sinn Féin.
However, if British Prime Minister Mr Tony Blair is as determined as people say he is, their relief could prove short-lived.
That outpouring of early Christmas cheer, by the way, is indicative of just how neuralgic some in the DUP grassroots feel at the prospect of Dr Paisley agreeing to lead a new Stormont administration with Mr Gerry Adams or Mr Martin McGuinness as his co-equal Deputy First Minister.
It might also reinforce the impression that the psychology of the DUP does indeed require a measure of republican humiliation in order to help the DUP's irreconcilables through their own pain barrier to power-sharing with an enhanced North-South dimension.
However, as Ulster Unionist leader Mr David Trimble discovered many times to his cost, peace-processing is never a one-way street.
The pendulum always swings back. And barely 24 hours after their visit to Belfast, the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, were making clear they did not intend to leave the DUP, or Sinn Féin, in the pain-free luxury of an extended blame game.
"So near and yet so far" was an expression heard frequently in broadcasts on Wednesday night, explaining "the deal that nearly was." However in the view of both premiers, this was to miss the point of Wednesday's visit to the Waterfront Hall on the Lagan's banks.
Their purpose was to demonstrate how far both sides had come, and how narrow was the remaining gap to be closed. The insistent word in Whitehall is that Mr Blair is absolutely determined that it will be closed, and that any who now think of sitting it out until after the British general election can forget it.
In truth, we have heard and reported Mr Blair in similar terms before. Sinn Féin chairman Mr Mitchel McLaughlin was openly dismissive when Mr Blair's June deadline slipped to September last. Dr Paisley in turn drove a coach and horses through every subsequent "final" deadline, as October gave way to November, and now December.
It is more than two years since Mr Blair's "acts of completion" speech, with its "fork in the road" and point of decision for republicans who could no longer remain "half-in, half-out" of the process.
Barely 14 months ago he bowed to pressure and called the Assembly election which delivered the DUP/Sinn Féin ascendancy, having twice postponed it because he saw no point in an election which would not deliver a government.
Having struggled this long year alongside the Taoiseach to bring those two parties to an accommodation, both groups exude easy confidence that if he cannot do it with them, Mr Blair certainly cannot do it without them. The sceptics, in other words, have good cause.
Moreover, it is arguable that Wednesday's gamble by Mr Blair and Mr Ahern - in publishing the non-agreed agreement - could spectacularly backfire on both men.
Dr Paisley is able to tell the world that the British and Irish governments, as well as the SDLP, supported his demand for a photographic record of any future IRA decommissioning, and that it was the IRA which said "No".
Yesterday's IRA statement, in turn, supports Mr Adams's assertion that he told the two premiers this demand was "never possible."
This begs the question of why the two governments included their compromise proposal for a photographic record in the first place, and how it survived at least three drafts.
On Wednesday, Mr Blair and Mr Ahern were at pains to say they were not alleging bad faith on the part of republican negotiators. And British sources admit they do not know if the IRA at any point actually considered the possibility of photographs at all. Yet Mr Adams unquestionably benefits from the suspicion being cultivated in some quarters now that it was Dr Paisley who scuppered the possibility of a major IRA concession with all his talk of "sackcloth and ashes" and republican surrender.
In fact, as Mr Jeffrey Donaldson observed yesterday, that acquittal of bad faith and the subsequent accounts of both Mr Adams and the IRA disprove that charge, since they had already advised the Taoiseach and Prime Minister the demand for photographs was unrealisable, long before Dr Paisley's controversial Ballymena speech a fortnight ago.
Yet as John Hume would tirelessly observe, perception can be as important as reality.
And the perception in many quarters yesterday was that both Dr Paisley and Mr Adams had avoided falling for the blame game, and that they had been helped to do so by the two governments. If that were to be the end result, and the political impasse endures beyond the general election, then what we witnessed on Wednesday could fairly be described as the latest in a series of failures of Anglo-Irish diplomacy.
But that is not where we are at yet, and the significance of the IRA's statement for both governments apparently is that nothing which Mr Blair and Mr Ahern put on the table on Wednesday has been withdrawn.
In London's view, to the contrary, complete IRA decommissioning, the end of paramilitarism and power-sharing remain in prospect.
And in Mr Adams's renewed appeal to Dr Paisley to talk directly to Sinn Féin is seen a continuing republican commitment to move things forward. Since Mr Adams already has his answer from Dr Paisley, this is taken in turn to suggest the republicans have not made their final move. If that is so, then Dr Paisley may not be left to rest on his laurels for long.