Conservative "port and Stilton" strategists at Westminster tell us how strongly they believe that decommissioning terrorist weaponry must be the next step in the peace process.
From the Westminster restaurant tables where they are bibulously lunched by the parliamentary lobby reporters, they are threatening a "constitutional crisis" on the matter.
Thus, when the legislation to give effect to the new Northern Ireland Assembly is going through the British parliament in the weeks ahead, they will be making a determined effort to try and force a formal linkage between decommissioning, the release of prisoners and Sinn Fein representatives taking office in the new Belfast administration.
Their threat is apparently being taken so seriously by the Blair government that, earlier this week, Dr Mo Mowlam took the unusual step of attending a meeting of the Conservative committee on Northern Ireland to discuss the issue.
She is unlikely to change their minds, for these are the same people who used this very issue in the final phase of the Major government, not out of concern for the safety of the people of Ireland or Britain, but as a convenient stick with which to beat him. So, as they once threatened the stability of the ceasefires to vent their spit on Major, they now threaten the implementation of the Belfast Agreement to wrongfoot Blair over House of Lords reform and other measures.
As far as Ireland is concerned, their tactics do nothing but promote instability and fertilise continued division at a time when the prospects for reconciliation and progress have never been more favourable. They should back off for, in attempting to rewrite the historic agreement, so hard-won and at such a terrible price, there is a risk they could cause it to founder.
By driving in the decommissioning wedge, they give a lifeline to the No unionists who, despite their resounding rejection, intend to exploit the issue to obstruct the implementation of the agreement. This in turn puts pressure on the Ulster Unionists who voted Yes to continue to press for hardware to be handed over.
In turn, this drives Sinn Fein to claim that preconditions are being imposed and its electoral mandate devalued, although there is no merit whatever in its attempt to put the IRA on a par with the legal state forces by calling for parallel disarming of the British army and RUC.
These conflicting pressures dominated the day-long talks Blair conducted at Stormont on Tuesday and will heavily influence the political agenda in the run-up to the Assembly elections at the end of the month and the subsequent parliamentary debate on the legislation.
Meanwhile, as the Independent International Commission on Decommissioning waits in the wings and we are driven ever more further into the decommissioning cul-de-sac, it is high time a note of reality was injected into the debate.
The commission was established in September 1997 to facilitate the handover of terrorist arms and explosives. It ran up a bill of £1.7 million in its first six months and it is estimated it could cost British and Irish taxpayers jointly at least as much again over the current six months. Staff from the United States, Canada and Finland, seconded by their governments, wait discreetly in specially established offices in Dublin and Belfast to facilitate the emptying of the hides and dumps. So far not a single bullet or an ounce of explosives has been received.
Before the agreement, both governments had said decommissioning was "an indispensable part of the political talks" but, when the agreement was finally concluded, there was still no firm commitment that anything would be handed over in the immediate future. Instead there is only a new deadline, two years away, and a renewed commitment on the part of the signatories "to continue to work constructively and in good faith with the commission and to use any influence they may have" to achieve the handover of illegally-held munitions.
There has been a studied silence from Gen John de Chastelain, who leads the decommissioning body, about how much hardware is out there. The British estimate the IRA received a massive arsenal from Libya in the mid-1980s: six tons of Semtex; 1,500 rifles; 1.5 million rounds of assorted ammunition; 20 SAM missiles; 50 rocket-launchers; 10 flame-throwers; and a quantity of general purpose and heavy machine-guns, some capable of ground-to-air fire.
Since then about one-third of the haul has been captured, North and South. Although a proportion of the munitions has been used, some security advisers calculate that what remains allows the IRA to maintain its campaign at pre-1994 ceasefire levels for seven to 10 years. There are no authoritative estimates of the hardware in loyalist hands.
But even if the IRA were to hand over every last conventional firearm, bullet and ounce of Semtex, its capacity to restart intensive violence would only be marginally compromised. The most potent weapons in the IRA's arsenal are both improvised and home-made, using readily available components and facilities which, given the organisation's expertise, could be quickly replicated if the peace process irretrievably fractured and the IRA wished to re-engage in violence.
The most damaging weapon at its disposal is the vehicle bomb: a car, van, lorry or trailer used as a platform to deliver a bomb. In the past such devices, which have regularly consisted of up to 4,000 lb of explosive, have been used to devastate town centres and other targets, causing millions of pounds worth of damage to property.
The next most threatening weapon is the "Barrack Buster", an improvised mortar, which has forced the RUC and army into extensive building programmes to secure and protect their bases throughout Northern Ireland.
Both these threats depend for their explosive force on HME - home-made explosive - which consists of fertiliser and nitro-benzene, both readily available in large quantities and easily processed into explosive form. Making the associated items, such as launch tubes and the conversion of vehicles, is a simple task.
Thus, an apparently fully disarmed IRA or, indeed, any of the loyalist groups, using homemade, improvised explosive devices could overnight re-equip and pose a serious security threat. Decommissioning is thus a distraction and must not become an obstacle in getting the new political institutions working. Building the peace has been all about risk. Let's take another. Trust in rust.
Chris Ryder, the author of The RUC: A Force Under Fire, is a former member of the Police Authority for Northern Ireland
Mary Holland is on leave