Though more than a year has passed since politicians in Northern Ireland signed the historic Good Friday peace accord, the document has remained a dead letter due to a dispute over the disarmament of the Irish Republican Army. Now the agreement is unraveling, posing a real danger that dialogue will once again be replaced by bullets and bombs.

Back in April 1998, it appeared that six years of arduous negotiations to end the bloody violence in Northern Ireland had been brought to a successful conclusion. Not only had the power-sharing agreement been approved by all the major political players, it also had won the backing of a majority of the province's Protestant and Catholic populations in both a referendum and in subsequent elections for the local assembly in Belfast.

Unfortunately, implementation of the agreement has stumbled over a provision in the accord that calls for the disarmament of paramilitaries on both sides of the religious divide. Although vaguely calling for the decommissioning of weapons to be completed by next spring -- well after the power-sharing government is to be established -- the accord fails to specify just how and when this is to be accomplished. It is in this vagueness that the current troubles lie.