Unionists appear to eschew power-sharing

IT seems to me that the Northern peace process is not stalled because of republican unwillingness to engage in childish semantics, but because of the electoral tensions within unionism.

It seems highly likely that the UUP will suffer at the hands of the DUP and the two governments are dedicated to saving David Trimble.

The reality is that the IRA ceasefire has been maintained for a considerable time, and while Belfast might not be as peaceable as we would like, the fact is that the nightly "body count" there seems proportionately no worse than Dublin or Limerick and can probably be put down to the same cause: common criminality.