A long road to devolution?

By Mark Devenport BBC Northern Ireland political editor

It is a topsy turvy world. In the old days, the traveller leaving England for Northern Ireland had to readjust to the sight of police officers bearing guns and the Army on the streets.

This week, en route to talks at the Northern Ireland Office in London, I had to make my way into the Underground past armed Metropolitan Police searching passengers with back packs.

Armed Metropolitan Police have been searching passengers

The London newspapers quoted police commanders saying their officers were exhausted after weeks of arduous anti-terrorist duty.

The Belfast papers in my bag still carried stories about the disbandment of the home battalions of the Royal Irish Regiment, which government sources argued was inevitable given the fact that the Army has been operating far below capacity.

Until the loyalist feud, the sources say, the Army was operating at about 4% capacity in Northern Ireland.

Since the feud, that figure has risen to nearer 20%. The rioting on Thursday night in north Belfast is a reminder that for some time the PSNI may continue to face particularly difficult challenges.

Residents on certain estates in east Belfast and Holywood might also argue that the Army's presence remains vital.

'Bracing itself for legislation'

But Tony Blair appears convinced this is the exception rather than the rule, and that the security reductions envisaged in the spring of 2003 are now overdue.

However, the prime minister is far from naive. He knows the decision not to preserve the Royal Irish as part of Northern Ireland's 5,000 strong peacetime garrison was always going to have serious political consequences.

Whatever the security chiefs say, disbanding the RIR is a political plus for Sinn Fein and a minus for the DUP.

The tactic of blaming concessions on the Trimble era is wearing increasingly thin - the party can try to use its clout at Westminster to hit back, but it needs the right issue and the right arithmetic

The DUP has also taken hits in relation to the extension of the current Policing Board, the release of Shankill bomber Sean Kelly and the abandonment by the governments of any support for photographs of decommissioning.

The party is bracing itself for the legislation due in the autumn on "on-the-runs".

The government's logic seems to be that off-loading these measures now both rewards republicans and clears the decks at a time when the DUP had no intention of serious engagement.

The DUP, as the Ulster Unionists are keen to point out, is starting to understand the difficulty of influencing a sovereign government with its mind made up on a definite course of action.

The tactic of blaming concessions on the Trimble era is wearing increasingly thin. The party can try to use its clout at Westminster to hit back, but it needs the right issue and the right arithmetic.

'A final settlement'

So the DUP's main response is to promise "time penalties" under which devolution will be delayed as a consequence of what they view as unwarranted concessions to the IRA.

Party sources talk about a minimum of two years before Stormont can be restored.

So 2007, then, the target date for Dail elections, the RIR's demise and, who knows, maybe Tony Blair's departure from Downing Street?

Governments "have abandoned any support for photographs"

Will he leave with a final settlement in Northern Ireland as his retirement present?

With unionist voters far from enthusiastic about restoring Stormont, prolonging direct rule has little downside for the DUP.

However, that could change if the government ticks off more items from Sinn Fein's shopping list.

Developments on policing, rates and water charges may also alter the terms of trade.

At this stage, it is impossible to predict whether such issues will make the public more or less anxious to see their local representatives in charge of local affairs.

For now, we are left discussing who shook whose hand on camera or not. Was it cock up or conspiracy that prevented Gerry Adams and Tony Blair going palm to palm?

Did Ian Paisley come within a hair's breadth of being the warm up act for a Sinn Fein photo opportunity?

That may all seem pretty petty, however for we peace process Kremlinologists, it is a diverting hobby which makes us nostalgic for the 1990s.

But am I nostalgic for the guns on the streets now so evident in London? Not one bit.