By chance on Thursday afternoon, I happened to see Tony Blair on television making his extraordinarily impressive Belfast speech. In its empathy with all sides in Northern Ireland, in its passion, and in its logic, it was one of the most remarkable political addresses I have heard.
This, I felt, was one of those rare occasions when a political leader found it both possible and right to set aside all the usual caution and qualifications that politics so often seems to impose, and simply to tell it as it is, in what Gerry Moriarty yesterday described as a "go for broke" speech.
His address reinforced my own conviction that we are now at the final crucial turning point of the Northern Ireland crisis. Just before I watched Blair speak I had in fact been seeking to convey precisely that feeling in a first version of this article - which has required relatively little modification in the light of Blair's speech, except to quote from some parts of that address.
Having followed closely every detail of the peace process from shortly before its first emergence into public view nine years ago, I am absolutely convinced that Blair is right in his view that whatever value Sinn Féin may have seen in the continued existence of the IRA before, during and even since the Belfast Agreement, that organisation now represents the only real obstacle to the achievement of the goal Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness set themselves a decade ago.
And for that reason I believe that we may now be nearer to a genuine full settlement of the Northern Ireland crisis than most people probably believe this weekend.
Let's go back to the agreement of April 1998. The complex, and necessarily turgid, text of that document reflects the fact that the IRA had not then reached internal agreement on the issue of decommissioning and disbandment. So, the most that Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness in their Sinn Féin role could then offer was that they would do their best to persuade their IRA colleagues to de-commission their arms over an unspecified period.
Minus Jeffrey Donaldson, the UUP accepted that fudge - albeit most reluctantly, and under very great pressure. But the doubts and uncertainties to which this ambiguous outcome to the negotiation gave rise amongst unionists clearly inhibited David Trimble from going all out to sell the agreement at that time in a positive and convincing way. And, as a result of his inability to do so, the UUP proved unable to deliver rapidly and effectively on the implementation of its provisions.
This uncertain and unenthusiastic UUP reaction served in turn to increase the difficulties facing Adams and McGuinness in persuading their colleagues to deliver on decommissioning within a reasonable time-scale. And, in further reaction, this slow delivery of decommissioning then weakened David Trimble's position within the UUP, eventually beyond the point that he could sustain.
Meanwhile, in the semi-vacuum created by this political stand-off, the frustration of various Loyalist paramilitary groups at Sinn Féin's much greater success in the elections to the Assembly, together with competition for territory and power between these loyalist groups themselves, tempted them to intensify sectarian attacks on Catholics as well as on each other, in the hope of provoking an IRA response that would lead to Sinn Féin losing its seats on the Executive.
Save in a very few cases, the IRA resisted the challenge offered to it by the intensified loyalist sectarian attacks. Whilst a return to sectarian paramilitary conflict on the streets of Belfast was thus successfully avoided, in some respects IRA actions in recent times have been counter-productive in relation to the Adams/McGuinness peace strategy.
Events like Colombia and the recent Derry attack on a bus-driver, as well as Provisional criminality in the Republic, culminating in the recent abortive armed conspiracy exposed in Bray, together with what seems to have been a most unwise intelligence operation in Stormont - all these have proved notably unhelpful to their peace process.
Looking back beyond these events it is, of course, tempting to criticise the slowness with which decommissioning has been tackled during the past 4½ years. But it has probably not been easy for Adams and McGuinness to bring with them along this path some of their colleagues both in the leadership and amongst the rank and file - and these two leaders have been legitimately concerned to avoid a further split that could strengthen the dissident IRA's - the so-called "Real IRA" and Continuity IRA.
HOWEVER, at this stage the Sinn Féin leadership faces the fact that the strategy that they initiated almost a decade ago is about to run into the ground unless they can, reasonably soon, commit Sinn Féin and the IRA "exclusively to a peaceful path and an end to the existence of "the IRA as a paramilitary organisation" - to quote Tony Blair's exact words.
It is encouraging that as recently as 10 days ago, on the Vincent Browne programme, Gerry Adams felt able to repeat that he envisages such a disbandment of the IRA as the eventual logical outcome of the peace process.
The two Governments, Irish and British, are at one in the conclusion that this is what now has to happen. The British government has the capacity to facilitate such a development by introducing very soon the additional legislation on policing that is needed to open the way for Sinn Féin support for the PSNI - and, it must be hoped, for Gerry Adams's forecasted disbandment of the IRA.
It was abundantly clear from Tony Blair's speech that, as part of the process of securing that outcome, he is prepared to take this and any other legitimate steps that will help Adams and McGuinness to secure the agreement of their colleagues to this final outcome.
We know that in matters of this kind deadlines set for each other by opposing parties, or by governments, can be counter-productive.
But Blair did not approach the issue in that way. Instead, his analysis of the current situation demonstrated a remarkable empathy with Sinn Féin's own approach to the peace process, and included a generous recognition of the fact - still denied by some of our own commentators - that its two leaders have "taken huge risks" because of their commitment "to make the agreement work".
Because Adams and McGuinness will not lightly allow their decade of very hard work to prove fruitless, I am encouraged to believe that we may in fact now be much nearer to a successful outcome than many at this moment of discouragement believe. And I feel confirmed in that view by both the manner and the choice of language by Gerry Adams when interviewed by Vincent Browne last week.
Although necessarily constrained in that interview by the need to deny the criminal offence of IRA membership, and by the further need to retain his authority vis-a-vis his colleagues by not repudiating the quarter-century-long campaign of violence, nevertheless in that interview Adams sounded more like an emerging democratic politician - and, as someone remarked to me, more human - than in any previous encounter with the media.