As parties play hardball on two final crunch issues, Blair and Ahern decide to take the ball off the pitch, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
At Hillsborough Castle on Tuesday night the Taoiseach, Mr Ahern, and the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, decided that if the parties couldn't sort out the final detail of the agreement to restore devolution then they would just have to do it themselves.
The two leaders looked weary after almost 30 hours of intense negotiations.
They were careful in their language, but it's fair to say they were more than a little cheesed off with the Ulster Unionists and Sinn Féin. Mr David Trimble's early exit from Hillsborough didn't improve their mood.
Mr Blair in particular, who was carrying a flu, was hoping for some clear-cut headlines from the Hillsborough negotiations that would boost his image ahead of the climax to the Iraqi crisis.
It wasn't to be, but the firm line from Dublin and London yesterday was that the final details of the deal should be tied down in the next four weeks. And this wasn't a triumph of hope over experience, their officials insisted.
Everybody agreed significant progress was made across all the issues but after two days of hothouse negotiations, the gap between Sinn Féin and the Ulster Unionists on sanctions could not be narrowed.
So, around 11 p.m. on Tuesday night Mr Ahern and Mr Blair decided to take the issue of penalties away from the parties and transform it into a British-Irish intergovernmental matter.
The two sovereign leaders were willing to share sovereignty on sanctions, but not with the parties. It will be for the proposed international monitoring or verification body to decide whether political parties or paramilitary groupings, including the IRA, were in breach of commitments to democracy and non-violence.
This body will be composed of members from Britain, the Republic, the US and Northern Ireland who have military and political experience.
Complaints of alleged transgressions can come from the Assembly but the final arbiters on this contentious subject will be the monitoring group and the governments.
The governments and the parties over the two days had worked their way through numerous issues - demilitarisation, criminal justice, policing, human rights, equality, maintaining the stability of the Assembly if it is ever restored, allowing the exiled home, the Irish language, and so on - but Mr Gerry Adams and Mr Martin McGuinness weren't budging on sanctions.
Equally, Mr David Trimble couldn't be turned on the issue of IRA fugitives.
Ulster Unionists would never accept what he perceived as an effective amnesty for the so-called IRA OTRs, the "on the runs". And, equally, the two governments took this issue away from the parties and turned it into an intergovernmental matter.
"There is a rather nice symmetry of discomfort here," as one official put it.
Mr Trimble however at his Ulster Unionist Council meeting on Saturday indicated that he could grudgingly tolerate this pain.
He said he would bitterly oppose new legislation that would allow the OTRs stay out of prison but acknowledged that the British government was sovereign and unilaterally could take any decision it liked on the matter.
That's the sort of response Mr Ahern and Mr Blair require from Sinn Féin in the next couple of weeks. Initially at least, republicans are acting angry and stubborn, and very disappointed with the Irish Government.
Even before Mr Ahern and Mr Blair were giving their press conference at midnight on Tuesday, Sinn Féin's Gerry Kelly was outside talking at a window to reporters inside the room. He believed in getting his retaliation in first.
As with everybody else, he conceded major progress was achieved across a broad range of issues. "But the issue of sanctions is totally unacceptable. The two governments are trying to push the issue at the behest of the unionists, and that is absolutely unacceptable to Sinn Féin," said Mr Kelly.
And that was the general line from Sinn Féin yesterday, and it is the line we will hear for the next week or so. But if Sinn Féin is to bite the bullet and adopt a similar hardheaded approach as Mr Trimble took on OTRs, then there must be a gradual softening in republican language on the issue.
In his press conference at Hillsborough, after the conference given by the Taoiseach and Prime Minister early yesterday morning, Mr Adams - while hardballing on sanctions - also indicated there could be some republican wriggle-room on the issue. "We will go back and reflect on this and consult with senior colleagues," he told us.
It's a huge issue for Sinn Féin. With more than 90 per cent of the deal in place will the party wreck the prospects for restoring devolution over one issue, when far more difficult matters were surmounted?
Without a deal the election, delayed until May 29th, might not happen. Without a deal therefore Sinn Féin would lose this window of opportunity to establish itself as the largest nationalist party - if not the overall largest party - in the Assembly.
There is a big tactical call for Mr Adams and Mr McGuinness here. It is proven that the more Sinn Féin establishes itself as a constitutional party the greater its electoral progress. It was peace rather than war that made Sinn Féin the force it is now. To be gracious enough to overcome its problems with penalties and endorse the deal could be the trigger for more Sinn Féin gains.
Sinn Féin will try to water down the proposals in the period to early next month when the two governments publish their take-it-or-leave-it blueprint. At Hillsborough this week, Sinn Féin got no comfort from the Taoiseach.
Mr Ahern indicated that he wasn't for turning on the sanctions issue. This is a good deal - go for it, was his effective message to Messrs Adams and McGuinness.
So, there are hard decisions for republicans to make in the next four weeks before Mr Ahern and Mr Blair present their plan for the final implementation of the Good Friday agreement. There is a delicate choreography to be gone through over these four weeks if we are to arrive at agreement. In Washington next week, President Bush will tell the parties what the Taoiseach and Prime Minister have already told them.
In the last weekend in March, Sinn Féin will gather for its annual ardfheis. If the party has changed its position on sanctions by then and decided to accept the package then this could be the forum where the party will decide whether to join the Policing Board.
An Ulster Unionist Council meeting is being tentatively pencilled in for early April, ahead of the arrival of Mr Blair and Mr Ahern, also to endorse the deal. But that will be contingent on the IRA already pledging to end all paramilitary activity and carrying out a major act of decommissioning.
It's all very problematic but the Taoiseach and Prime Minister reckon the deal will be done. In the House of Commons yesterday Mr Blair spelled out the alternative to a deal: "There is no way this agreement is going to be renegotiated. It is either implemented or we don't have the peaceful future in Northern Ireland we want, and I want to see that peaceful future," he said.