With each passing day the lack of any resolution on the decommissioning issue generates further frissons. Mr David Trimble and Mr Seamus Mallon stepped out of this deteriorating environment for a few days to undertake a Northern Ireland trade and investment visit to the United States. But distance does not make the problem go away. Mr Trimble now suggests that the new bodies provided for in the Agreement may not come into existence until February. A Belfast newspaper reports that the IRA stance on decommissioning is hardening further. And Mr Gerry Adams says that nationalist confidence in the Agreement will be shaken if there is any failure to meet the time-scale for the Executive and the cross-Border bodies.
Meanwhile, the two governments and politicians in the Assembly continue to focus their hopes upon General John de Chastelain's ability to come up with some formula which will get everyone off the hook. On Friday the Taoiseach declared somewhat enigmatically that he was satisfied the discussions between General de Chastelain and Mr Martin McGuinness would be what they should be under the terms of the Agreement.
The independent decommissioning body could find some means of affirming that decommissioning is in place while allowing the paramilitaries to hold on to their weapons for a while - or so it is hoped. It is true that there is room for some imaginative juggling here. Arms will have to be inventoried and perhaps moved to central storage points as part of the process. Yet it is unlikely that even these steps could be certified as meaningful if the IRA, at the same time, refuses to sign up to a schedule for full decommissioning.
Hardening rhetoric on all sides has had the effect of reducing the general's room for manoeuvre. Also on Friday, a group of Mr Trimble's critics formed themselves into a new pressure group "Union First". Mr Trimble is increasingly vulnerable and even his closest allies and supporters in his Ulster Unionist Party will desert him unless he is able to secure demonstrable progress on decommissioning. In that event sufficient cross-community support would be lacking to establish the cross-Border bodies and the new councils. The Assembly and the Agreement itself would be in crisis - perhaps fatally so.
Simple pragmatism, if nothing else, must persuade Sinn Fein that this bleak scenario must be avoided. If David Trimble falls, mainstream unionism will lurch back to its instinctive, not-an-inch position. There must be movement and it is going to have to come from the republican side, regardless of the fact that the letter of the Agreement supports Sinn Fein in its contention that its Ministers are entitled to their seats in the Executive without prior decommissioning.
Sinn Fein should know better than most that a point is sometimes reached in political life in which it is necessary to make a gesture in order to dig one's political rivals out of a hole - even one of their own making. At many points along the way Sinn Fein itself needed, and was given, the helping hand it required to keep itself on course to its present position of political success. Its prohibition from the airwaves was rescinded. Mr Adams got his visa for the United States. The then President, Mrs Robinson, took the risk of a public meeting and a controversial handshake. Prisoners were released or repatriated. Mr Albert Reynolds received Mr Adams and his colleagues at Government Buildings in Dublin.
The give towards Sinn Fein and its paramilitary allies has continued. The prisons are emptying. The British Army is off the streets. Mr Chris Patten and his committee are examining the future of policing. The observation towers along the Border are closing down. It is now time for Sinn Fein to start reciprocating.