NO MATTER how much the IRA points to the long silence of its guns as evidence of its commitment to the Northern Ireland peace process and no matter that it pledges that it has no intention of returning to violence, how can the process progress with people in the background bearing arms?

This is the simple question the republicans and, indeed, some of the loyalist groups have to answer as the refusal of the IRA to decommission its weapons threatens to either lead to the Ulster Unionists walking away from Stormont or the suspension of the Northern Ireland assembly and the return of direct rule - and the ominous circumstance of what may follow.

We have from Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams the warning that the Provisionals will never disarm if the new political institutions of power-sharing are allowed to collapse or are suspended.

But does that not clearly demonstrate the very fact that those same institutions are now in danger of that because the signal from the paramilitaries remains that they will not give up their guns and explosives in order to belong to the supposed democratic institutions? In other words they want to keep their guns in order to get their own way.

What sort of politically-based peace can there be if it has the strings of armed menace attached to it?

For it to succeed, the IRA and their protestant protagonists will have to give up their arms one day.

Is the IRA's obstinate refusal to accept this based on the Ulster Unionists having set this February deadline for decommissioning to begin?

They may not like being coerced by the loyalists in this fashion, but no matter where the compulsion or persuasion comes from, they must, surely, realise that disarmament has to eventually happen if the peace process they insist they are adhering to is to proceed and for their commitment to it to be credible.

The uncertainty of what may occur next if this crisis is not safely resolved is frightening.

But one thing that IRA and Sinn Finn can be sure of is they will reap the censure for the peace process's failure and become politically isolated in Ireland and in the rest of the world.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.