The Northern parties resume discussions on Tuesday after a fortnight's break for reflection, though it has yet to be shown that that's how they spent the time.
The governments, by and large, stayed silent.
So did the parties supporting the Belfast Agreement and its interpretation by the governments at Hillsborough.
The anti-agreement parties cried "No" once more and the republican movement blew hot and hotter on the embers of Easter.
On Thursday, Sinn Fein accused the governments of rewriting the agreement; and, bang on cue, the UVF said it wouldn't be decommissioning to get Sinn Fein into office.
A senior member of the republican movement, Brian Keenan, came to the conclusion that Bertie Ahern needed lessons in history.
And the IRA, which had promised before the meeting at Hillsborough to tell the families of the disappeared where their bodies were buried, postponed the gesture until the murderers have been given an amnesty.
So the republican movement is - and one way or another will remain - at the centre of things, not only in the context of next week's meetings but while the commitments made in the agreement fall to be implemented.
HERE are some of the things Sinn Fein leaders say about themselves, their party and its role in politics.
Here, too, are some of the questions their claims and statements raise.
Sinn Fein is not the IRA. That's true. But to claim that the party cannot then be asked about IRA activities, aims or intentions is to deny a relationship which is undeniable.
Sinn Fein and the IRA may not be the same thing; they are inextricably linked in the republican movement. Indeed, what would the republican movement be without them?
The party acknowledges the link. It was once the custom for a representative of the army council to deliver a message from the IRA to closed sessions of ard-fheiseanna; it no longer happens, though released IRA prisoners were paraded before last year's gathering.
The electoral claim that a vote for Sinn Fein is a vote for peace is clearly significant - to the party and to many of those who voted for it.
The claim would be meaningless if Sinn Fein had no connection with a force capable of putting an end to peace.
The Belfast Agreement does not set a date for the start of decommissioning.
This is so. But it does set a date, May 2000, by which decommissioning should be complete.
Sinn Fein says it accepts all of the agreement's commitments, including this one.
But it also accepts the IRA's refusal, in a series of statements, to contemplate decommissioning now or at any time. The contradiction has never been explained.
Republicans have never agreed to decommissioning. It's not part of the tradition.
True. But republicans have never been presented with the same opportunity to share power in an agreement which unambiguously acknowledges their right to continue their campaign for unity by political means.
After the Civil War it took five years for the anti-Treaty forces to form a party and enter the Dail; another five years for that party, Fianna Fail, to be elected to office.
Not only did Fianna Fail cease to rely on violence or the threat of violence, de Valera and his ministers took action against those who refused to follow their example.
A Fianna Fail government interned and executed members of the IRA during the second World War.
Clann na Poblachta, some of whose members were interned by the Fianna Fail government, became part of the first coalition in 1948.
The coalition was led by Fine Gael.
It took longer for the Official republicans - so called after the split with the Provisionals - to be accepted as unambiguous democrats.
For them there were no short-cuts to office or powersharing.
Sinn Fein finds itself in vastly different circumstances, with an opportunity and a challenge with which none of its predecessors was presented.
But the IRA simply refuses to decommission its weapons.
This is certainly what the public has been led to believe. What interviewers have not asked Sinn Fein spokesmen is whether it means that the politics of the republican movement is being dictated by the IRA.
This used to be the case, which was why ard-fheiseanna were given a message from the army council. (In republican theology, the army council was the real government of the country.)
The notion that the real government should be a group whose identities are never revealed and whose communications are wrapped in language that has to be decoded is bizarre.
It's also dangerous, especially when a party which accepts this kind of stuff is at the centre of negotiations about the future of the country.
It's time the Sinn Fein leaders were asked - or invited to ask their republican partners - what, if not decommissioning, should be done to achieve the peaceful, democratic order to which the agreement commits them.
They regularly repeat that the onus is on the governments, the unionists and the loyalist paramilitaries to take the guns out of politics.
The Provisional IRA and the loyalist paramilitaries are the forces with the illegally held weapons specified in the agreement. What do Sinn Fein and the IRA - and, for that matter, the loyalists - propose to do about it?
Sinn Fein has a mandate. It's entitled to sit in the Assembly and, under the terms of the agreement, to two places in the executive.
Sinn Fein's mandate is undeniable. It's one of the things on which those who want an end to violence are pinning their hopes.
Sinn Fein stands fourth among the Assembly parties after the UUP, the SDLP and the DUP; ahead of Alliance, the PUP, the Women's Coalition, the NIUP and others. These also have mandates. They, too, must be respected.
As for the ministerial seats, they are there to be taken. The rules say so. But in this case, too, democracy applies. Did anybody imagine it would not?
Did anybody seriously believe ministers could sit in government while maintaining a connection with paramilitary partners who not only claimed the right to hold arms but controlled an impressive arsenal?
Many interviewers timidly suggest the problem here is David Trimble's, as though whether or not Sinn Fein joined the executive were part of a political game.
No one, unionist or nationalist, whatever their domestic difficulties, could or should enter partnership with those who have paramilitary associates, unless the putative partners are prepared to break the connection or their associates are willing to put their weapons out of use.
Bertie Ahern is criticised by Brian Keenan, among others, for a related reason. Mr Keenan warns the Taoiseach about his support for decommissioning.
The Taoiseach, according to this hard man from Belfast had "better understand that he cannot treat Irish history like this; he cannot treat the republican fraternity like this because we are strongest in adversity . . . We are going to win this struggle because the reason for the struggle remains."
The Taoiseach, too, has a mandate. It has been given to him by people of this State under the Constitution. His duty is to protect the integrity and the interests of the Republic and its people.
He would be failing in his duty if he did anything less.