Deadlines, as Senator George Mitchell demonstrated this time last year, can be effective when contesting parties refuse to shift positions, insisting that somebody else must move first. A similar ground-play begins in Belfast this morning with the aim of activating the new executive and the other arrangements provided for in the Belfast Agreement. But it is worth recalling that slippage occurred last April when the parties to the talks could not meet Senator Mitchell's first deadline and Good Friday became the fallback date. Negotiations this time may go down to the 59th minute of the last hour - and a bit beyond.
There will very probably be black moments in the week. But there is some reason to anticipate an outcome which will allow the Secretary of State to trigger the mechanism transferring responsibility for running Northern Ireland from Westminster to the Assembly and the executive. As between Mr Gerry Adams's indication that he is prepared to "stretch the Republican constituency" and Mr David Trimble's insistence that there be an "event" to indicate a start to decommissioning, there is a range of imaginative possibilities. Decommissioning need not entail destruction or handing over of weapons. It does not equate to surrender. Among other reasons, General John de Chastelain's independent commission is there to give everyone involved a way forward without loss of face or abandonment of principle.
Nothing is possible without compromise. The unionists have several times stated their willingness to be flexible. Mr Adams first indicated a similar inclination on St Patrick's Day in Washington. But none of this amounts to anything while Mr Adams's colleagues in the IRA insist that they will never decommission, that they will not yield up a round of ammunition or an ounce of explosives. It is as if the IRA believes it is not at all bound by the requirement that decommissioning be completed within two years, in spite of the fact that its political representatives, Sinn Fein, signed up to the Agreement. Yet Sinn Fein and the IRA purport to believe, notwithstanding the "not-around-not-an-ounce" stance, that they will be allowed to participate as ministers of the new executive. It will not happen. The Taoiseach made it clear in his recent Sunday Times interview. Deputy First Minister, Mr Seamus Mallon, has reiterated it over the weekend. The Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, has stated it on three separate occasions. And Mr Adams got the same message from President Clinton on St Patrick's Day at the White House. So where does this leave Sinn Fein in the critical negotiations which begin in Belfast this morning?
It leaves the leadership of the party facing a crucial decision. Sinn Fein has three options. It must deliver credible action from the IRA or it must abandon, for the present at least, its hopes of participation in government. A third possibility - for all that it is highly unlikely - is that it renounces the IRA, acknowledges that it is beyond its capacity to influence its actions and seeks admission to the executive on the strength of its vote in last June's elections. What happens this week will be effectively the test of whether the "Republican family" is now truly committed to peaceful methods or if what we have seen so far has been nothing more than a tactical switch to "unarmed struggle". Those who are committed to purely democratic methods have given everything that is within their gift to the various paramilitaries who have declared that they too want to participate. That which is now sought - the privileges of democratically-elected office while a private, armed force operates on the streets - cannot be ceded. It will be an instructive week.