BBC NI's political editor Stephen Grimason examines what happens when the dust settles on the British Government's decision to start the clock ticking on suspending devolution.

The republican movement was politically mugged this week.

The British and Irish government finally abandoned their begging bowl approach to decommissioning and reached for the lead pipe.

The modern mugger, of course, doesn't just take what is on the victim's person.

Nope, Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern intend to march Gerry Adams to the autobank and get him to make a withdrawal using his IRA credit card.

It's an ambitious exercise in strongarm tactics but what will they do if Mr Adams tells them he has forgotten the IRA's PIN number?

Republicans are not called Sinn Fein "Ourselves Alone" for nothing and until now they have had a perfectly balanced approach to decommissioning - they have a chip on each shoulder about it.

Mr Adams has long made the case there is nothing in the Good Friday Agreement that says decommissioning must happen.

The relevant section says all parties to the agreement confirm their intention "to use any influence they may have to achieve decommissioning of all paramilitary arms within two years".

Events of this week

The Sinn Fein president might well secure judicial backing for his interpretation of that section but after the events of this week that is all rather beside the point.

The Good Friday Agreement is not a legal document, it's a political document and in effect it means what the participants want it to mean.

When all the dust settles on the British Government's decision to start the clock ticking on suspending devolution and returning Northern Ireland to Direct Rule by Westminster, Sinn Fein's legal and technical arguments won't matter, at least not in the short term.

London and Dublin are transfixed by the political requirement to stop David Trimble resigning from the post of first minister.

If he goes, even if there is a successful review process and devolution is restored, he may never garner enough weighted majority votes in the assembly to be returned as first minister - or so the received wisdom goes.

All of which translates into republicans having for the moment lost the political argument over decommissioning and a determination by Mr Blair and Mr Ahern to pile the pressure on and squeeze a hitherto unforthcoming concession on the weapons issue from the IRA.

The government view is that republicans badly miscalculated at the end of the Mitchell Review when they thought the Ulster Unionists would be so determined to stay in a Stormont government they would never walk away from it regardless of what happened on the arms front.

Over the next week there will be only one game in town, a sort of Who Wants to be Political Millionaire gameshow where just two correct answers would win the jackpot.

The only contestants are the republican movement. The first question is: are you prepared to decommission? If the answer is yes the second question is: when will you decommission?

If the answer to that produces a timetable ending in May this year the assembly may yet survive.

Such a scenario would probably get Sinn Fein off the hook but there is nothing in the republican ether to suggest they are going to give the right answers.

There is another problem. Even an IRA commitment to disarm and a timetable is less than the Ulster Unionists have demanded as their minimum requirement.

They wanted weapons disposal to begin before the end of last month and the Ulster Unionist Council made it pretty clear it would not allow David Trimble to stay in government with republicans if that had not happened.

The council meets again next Saturday, 12 February and is in a foul mood after the Patten report's endorsement by the government.

Would the delegates give Mr Trimble more time to deliver the IRA? There is again nothing in the political ether to suggest they would but the pressure currently on republicans would soon switch to the first minister if the IRA position changed.

Where do we go from here? Back to square one on decommissioning by the sound of things with a return to the same place on devolution swiftly following.