Reason suggests that the underlying momentum in Northern Ireland's politics should now be towards the centre. More than 70 per cent of the voters endorsed the Belfast Agreement, including a majority of those who would normally support one or other of the unionist parties. Mr David Trimble's message of compromise, supported by a coalition of powerful influences, fissured the "no surrender" mindset. But it could be disastrous to assume that this tentative dawning of detente must inevitably break into a new day of enduring accommodation. Few of those unionist voters who gave Mr Trimble his majority said Yes without qualms. For many it was an act of faith. If that faith is judged to have been misplaced, there is every possibility that the surge towards compromise which aligned a majority of unionist voters with Mr Trimble's position might be dissipated. The composition of the new Assembly depends on the handling of a number of key issues between now and voting day. Chief among these is the decommissioning of weapons, with prisoner releases following a close second for many voters. On the nationalist side, the agenda includes progress on police and justice reform, equality of opportunity and rights safeguards. There have been positive and negative developments in recent days. The events which led to the ending of the stand-off at Harryville last week contrasted sharply with the violence which took place on the Garvaghy Road this weekend. Something perhaps close to dove-like sounds have come from the DUP's Mr Peter Robinson. His party will not enter the Assembly to wreck it, he insists. That may intimate a recognition even among those who have opposed the Agreement that what has come into existence is likely to endure.
In the meantime, the UUP has signified in its refusal to endorse Mr Jeffrey Donaldson's nomination for the Assembly, that those who do not follow the agreed line will feel the weight of sanction from the top. These are all encouraging signs that the Assembly will come into being, secure in its commitment to develop fully the agenda agreed on Good Friday.
It could all founder if sufficient progress is not made on decommissioning and unless the prisoners issue is handled sensitively. Mr Gerry Adams's reported remarks from his US visit last week are hardly helpful. Sinn Fein does not accept the Agreement's notion of consent and sees its definition of national self-determination as flawed. The Agreement is in danger of "crashing" because of unionist insistence on making decommissioning a "big issue", he says. It is true that security chiefs, North and South, place little value on decommissioning and are, in fact, much more disquieted by the prisoner release proposals. But a great many of the votes which will be needed to consolidate Mr Trimble's position in the Assembly depend upon people being convinced that the war is over. Many believe that the best evidence of this would be the handover of weapons. If they cannot be assured that violence is at an end, while at the same time prisoners walk free, many may move from the centre to the extremes once again. If the paramilitaries cannot be brought to the point of actual decommissioning this side of the elections, convincing progress is going to have to be shown in creating stuctures and methods for doing so in the months ahead. It is not solely a problem for Sinn Fein. The Loyalist alignments face the same issue. But there is a particular onus on the Sinn Fein/IRA axis to make it clear beyond doubt that nationalist Ireland will never again take up the gun to pursue its political ambitions. A clear affirmation is needed that the IRA's war is over. Mr Adams's US comments only serve to inflame unionist moderates while reminding the rest of us how tenuous still is the influence of democracy within the culture of the organisation he leads.