IT has taken us three years to move from the Hume/Adams initiative, through the Downing Street Declaration, the cessation of IRA violence, Framework Document, the Clinton visit, the Mitchell Commission, and the Canary Wharf bomb to the impending Northern election and the opening of all party talks.
Mr John Major's Thursday article was clearly designed as a final move in this complex process, intended to clear the way for a genuinely all-party negotiation.
A risky, final move for two reasons. First of all by seeking to help Sinn Fein through the introduction at this late stage of an element of constructive ambiguity about certain key issues this article carried the danger of destabilising the Prime Minister's own support, not just in the Conservative Party but also in his cabinet.
Moreover, it also carried a risk of sparking off a new intransigence amongst nervous Ulster unionists, now in the middle of an election campaign in which they are seeking to maximise their support vis a vis the strident populism of the DUP.
If the risk Mr Major has taken is to pay off, it will be necessary for Sinn Fein to realise as clearly the SDLP and all parties in the Dail have done that the British government has now played its last card to realise this, and to respond appropriately to that reality.
This certainly does not require that Gerry Adams should immediately announce himself satisfied and ready to tell the IRA to announce the end of its campaign. But it would involve a shift away from his hitherto successful strategy of demanding seemingly endless further clarifications.
For a clever negotiator knows not only how to screw the last bit of concession from his antagonist he can also identify the point at which he has secured all the gains that he can hope to secure and when, therefore, pressing further demands could destabilize the whole negotiating process.
Because the British made the initial mistake of demanding prior decommissioning an unrealistic pre-condition as it had not been part of the "deal" that had led to the cessation of violence and because their retreat from this stance was so clumsily executed and so long-drawn-out, Sinn Fein has become accustomed to a process of extracting further concessions on this issue.
THERE is, therefore, a danger that it could fail to realise that it has come to the end of this road and that the rest of the decommissioning battle must be fought out at the all-party talks.
What Mr Major has done in this article goes well beyond the earlier dropping of the pre-condition of prior action on decommissioning. What he has now done under pressure from our Government and to the evident fury of people in his own party and cabinet is to circumscribe the concept of "addressing" the issue of decommissioning at the outset of the all party talks.
Instead of requiring agreement to be reached at the beginning of the all-party talks on decommissioning itself, Mr Major's proposal now involves agreement at that point on "how Mitchell's proposals on decommissioning can be taken forward without blocking the negotiations"
For Sinn Fein to require at this stage further clarification of this formula, which has the backing of the Irish and, presumably, the US government, would be to back itself into a corner from which it might then be unable to extricate itself. Much may now depend upon the ability of Mr Adams to recognise this reality and to react accordingly.
Because the British government is currently engaged in a most delicate balancing act, which at this stage requires the use of coded language not just on decommissioning but also on two other key issues the time-scale of the talks, and the openness of the agenda.
To have laid down a time-scale tighter than that already provided for in the original British announcement of the election, would have been seen by unionists as a late and provocative attempt to "bounce" them. Yet, understandably, nationalist concern lest unionists drag out the process interminably is recognised, and is subtly met in this article by Mr Major's assurance that "no one wants to drag out the process".
On the openness of the agenda, the unionists impaled themselves on a major hook in February last year, following the distorted advance leaking of phrases from the Framework Document to the London Times. As a result, a specific reiteration of the solemn British commitment to the Framework Document at this stage would have endangered unionist participation in the talks. But Mr Major has finessed this issue by describing the agenda in these terms.
"A serious effort to reach a comprehensive settlement covering all the issues of concern and acceptable to all concerned. The purpose of the negotiations is arrangements for the future government of Northern Ireland within a framework of stable relationships within the island of Ireland and between the peoples of these islands which can command the widest possible acceptability, accommodate diversity and provide for the necessary mutual reconciliation.
NOTE the absence of any reference to the union and the placing of relationships within the island before relationships between the two islands.
Note also a later reference in Mr Major's article to the fact that "the shape of an eventual settlement can occasionally be glimpsed behind the sound and fury of the parties . . . The task is to turn this glimpse into a reality." What is "glimpsed" here is self evidently the kind of settlement envisaged in the Framework Document.
In approaching any negotiation, a crucial concern must be to have one's own concerns accommodated while refraining from imposing in advance on one's opponents positions or language that would prevent them from being able to sit down at the table. And that clearly is the option that Mr Major's article is designed to offer to Sinn Fein.
When the history of these events comes to be written, the two Irish Governments of the 27th Dail will, I believe, be seen to have provided throughout these three years the dynamic of the whole process. Time after time they have cajoled or harassed the British government to take initiatives, adopt positions, provide reassurances, and most crucial of all to get itself off hooks upon on which it has impaled itself.
A disturbing feature of events during recent months, however, has been the nature of the attacks by some of our journalists upon the Government's handling of Northern Ireland. The contrast between this Government's remarkable achievements in relation to Northern Ireland since early last year, and the scathing criticism of its performance by some journalists has been quite disconcerting all the more so because in the past we have been able to rely upon our media for a remarkably well informed, well judged, and responsible approach to the Northern Ireland crisis.
For, just as great credit is due to Albert Reynolds in securing the cessation of violence and the Downing Street Declaration, so also the present Government has clocked up a series of remarkable coups. These include the Framework Document the staged climb down by the British government on its untenable demand for a start to decommissioning at the outset of all-party talks the Clinton visit the Mitchell Commission and the crucial reassurance measures of the past few weeks, which have culminated in Thursday's John Major article.
Whatever may have been the reasons for the negative manner in which a minority of journalists have responded to these achievements, one must hope that, at this crucial moment, Sinn Fein will not allow the tone of comments from these sources to delude it into fatally over playing its hand.