SARAH NELSON: On the beat in the border town of Enniskillen.. For years the RUC has been the thin green line in the fight against terrorism, but these days officers' duties are just as likely to involve routine patrols of the High Street. It's a sign of how far the peace process has come, but the changing role of these officers is bound up in the talks about the future of their whole community. The debate about the RUC is only one of changes set in train by the good Friday agreement. But the whole peace process is dependent on solving two fundamental problems - how to persuade Unionists and Republicans to sit together in government together and how to get paramilitaries to give up their weapons. That's been the stumbling block for the past eighteen months - and the George Mitchell review is widely seen as the last opportunity for overcoming it. GEORGE MITCHELL: We have made it clear the limitations of our influence, but we've also made it clear that our influence, and if you like our special influence was available to the peace process. Others have attempted unfortunately, particularly the Unionists, to exaggerate that. SAM FOSTER: Adams and his henchmen are very good strategists, they want to go out to the outside world and say to the people: well look we wanted government here, but the Unionists walk away from it. The Unionists aren't walking away from anything at all. SEAMUS MALLON: What they are doing is actually putting at jeopardy the entire agreement and its potential while they continue with this never ending and indeed futile debate about the methods of decommissioning. NELSON: Enniskillen almost twelve years ago to the day. Eleven people died when the IRA bombed the town's remembrance day service.. SAM FOSTER (CLIP) ...all hell seemed to break loose ... there was shouting, screaming, crying the breaking of glass, dust and dirt and debris flying all over the show. .........I got over to where the bomb had gone off and everybody was panicking, it was a very frightening experience, a sickening experience. NELSON: Sam Foster was by the memorial when the bomb exploded.. He comforted the dying and in the months that followed helped counsel all the survivors. He still lives in Enniskillen and as an Ulster unionist, now shares power with Sinn Fein on the local council. Last year he supported the Good Friday Agreement; but if its target of May 2000 for total decommissioning is to be met, and an executive government formed, he believes there have to be actual weapons and explosives given up by the IRA NOW. SAM FOSTER: It's got to be no guns, no government, it's got to come, we can't have it any other way, we will jump simultaneously with them but a commitment or a promise isn't just good enough.. The obligation is there, that's the one gap in the Belfast Agreement that everybody wants to see fulfilled. ACTUALITY. NELSON:: With the failure to implement the agreement, disaffection among Unionists is spreading.. Sam's niece, Arlene joins eighty others from around County Fermanagh to hear the arguments against police reform. Unionists only narrowly voted in favour of the good Friday agreement last year, and a review of the RUC was a part of that. but speaker after speaker calls for the Patten recommendations to be dropped. ACTUALITY. NELSON: In such a climate the Ulster unionist party must move carefully. . With a slim majority of unionists supporting the agreement, the leadership can't risk any change of policy which might lose support. ARLENE FOSTER: When the Good Friday Agreement was ratified by seventy-one percent of the Northern Ireland people I accepted that as a democrat and said that I would work with them, not, but regrettably the parts of the Agreement that made me vote against it have been the parts that have come back to haunt us if you like. For me the Good Friday Agreement was not really an agreement at all insofar as an awful lot of the issues were fudged and especially on decommissioning NELSON: At Stormont some believe the Ulster unionist leader David Trimble could and should move before decommissioning of actual weapons if Sinn Fein could guarantee that it would soon follow. It would be difficult to sell this to the wider party, but it might be accepted by assembly members . DAVID McCLARTY: The impasse I believe can be broken, and it is purely a personal view, that if we get a commitment from Sinn Fein that they are going to decommission, decommission within perhaps a two or four week period, if we get a declaration from Sinn Fein to say that the war is over that merely in itself is not good enough, that declaration would have to be endorsed by the IRA themselves. Then I believe a way forward could be found .That may involve the Ulster Unionist party allowing Sinn Fein into an executive before there is actual decommissioning. FOSTER: That would be a very difficult issue and I am not at all convinced that David Trimble will be going down that road because he has stood very resolute with party policy, it's good party policy all the time, that's what the party expect, that's what the party want and we are backing him on that. ARLENE FOSTER: He would have to come back to the executive council of the party and put his proposals forward to the party. It's very difficult to call, what way the executive was split in that situation because there are a lot of people who would support David very clearly and have done right throughout this process but may not be prepared to take on that extra so called risk and but I do believe that there would be a split within the executive. NELSON: An abandoned border check point is a symbol of the rewards of the peace process. . Despite these benefits David Trimble can't bring Sinn Fein into an executive without IRA decommissioning because the majority of the Ulster Unionist party still won't let him. For some that means the onus is on Sinn Fein to act first. MALLON: I think there is a move has to be made by Sinn Fein to try and get the Unionists off the hook that they are on and it's as simple as that in many ways. It is a hook that they have got themselves on - Sinn Fein can make the move to try and get them off it. NELSON: Behind the scenes there are claims the Sinn Fein leadership has been floating the idea of a token gesture on decommissioning for over a year. Tommy McKearney left Sinn Fein more than a decade ago, when the Adams strategy of political engagement was just beginning. A former IRA prisoner he's come home to visit his brothers graves. Two were killed while on duty for the IRA; a third was shot dead by a Loyalist. He says the problem for the leadership is the Republican belief that any hand-over of weapons is a surrender and a betrayal of those who've died. TOMMY McKEARNEY: The leadership of Sinn Fein would tolerate an amount of decommissioning, a token decommissioning, but my opinion is that they are concerned that it would be seen or constructed as an act of humiliation and under no circumstances in my opinion would the Sinn Fein leadership obviously tolerate something that would be seen to be humiliating. NELSON: The danger of such a humiliation is that it might create a split in the Republican movement. The security forces patrol border areas regularly to contain dissident activity. Breakaway groups like the Real IRA are known to have been active in recent months, and there are fears of renewed violence. Security sources say dissidents have been trying to gain control of the Provisional's arms dumps in the Republic. FLANAGAN: The threat particularly currently from dissident Republicans, is very real, and that's of great concern to me, it is of great concern to my counterparts, in the republic and we have been working together and very hard in order to thwart the intention that these people clearly have to engage in attacks upon us. McKEARNEY: I think there is always a risk that there will be a split if decommissioning takes place, because there will always be a percentage of people within the republican community who view decommissioning as a matter of principle. Now the calculation thereafter is what percentage may well view this as a principle as distinct from a tactic. And I can't say for sure since I am not privy to the internal calculations of the Sinn Fein management but my guess would be that Sinn Fein could not countenance greater slippage than ten per cent overall. McLAUGHLIN: Well you know again that is misinformed. Our position is that we have always moved on the basis of what was deliverable, what is do-able. We have to deal with the real world, and the real world is that the IRA has made it's position clear: they are not going to decommission - that's their statement. Now what do we do as politicians about that, do we all go home; or do we take the political conditions that, in which that decision and that attitude was formed, and then attempt to change those conditions - now that's what Sinn Fein is committed to do. NELSON: At the moment there is no plan B - but there's every prospect of no agreement in the short time that's left of the Mitchell review. If that's the case the whole process could be put on hold if not abandoned altogether - and many of the proposals in the Good Friday agreement, such as the reform of the RUC and the future of the assembly, would be put at risk. ARLENE FOSTER: Quite clearly if there is no agreement the Patten reforms will have to be put aside. A lot of those reforms are security dependent and one has to look at what the security situation will be at that particular time and obviously at the moment I would say that they are not going to be able to be implemented because the security situation here is certainly not right. SAM FOSTER: If the agreement fails all the other aspects of what was in that agreement must fall too, you cannot have one without the other. The Patten commission has been found to be very, very offensive, very insulting, very sickening in so far as the RUC is concerned. ACTUALITY. NELSON: At the defend the RUC meeting, the mother of a murdered police officer moves the audience to tears. The Patten suggestion that the insignia and title of the police force should be changed has angered those who believe it would dishonour the sacrifices the RUC has made. If the Mitchell review fails, and the peace process is seen to have stalled, many unionists will step up their support for the RUC's resistance to some of the Patten proposals. FLANAGAN: The suggestion that the full-time reserves should be discontinued, the suggestion that we should be significantly smaller as an organisation, some of the suggestions in the way Special Branch work with Crime Department.. Some of these recommendations are clearly very security dependent and can only be proceeded with in an enabling security environment, which currently sadly we don't have. I couldn't be part of arrangements which clearly reduce my ability to protect the public. I couldn't be part of any arrangements foisted upon me which leave the public at risk. NELSON: But it's not only the changes in policing which are in the balance. The army has reduced the number of soldiers on duty in Northern Ireland since the cease fire, and Republicans will press for further reductions even if the Mitchell review fails. They'll argue its even more important to push ahead in other areas of the Good Friday Agreement to maintain momentum and stop the process unravelling. McLAUGHLIN: If the review fails to get agreement on setting up the political institutions then we're saying very clearly now to the two Governments it's up to you to make decisions about how this will be moved forward. So clear statements for example that, you know, that there will continue to be the, the process in terms of the Equality Commission, Prisoner Release Programme, the Human Rights Commission, the Criminal Justice Review - all of that continues, because it doesn't actually need the imprimatur of the parties. NELSON: When the talks broke up yesterday, the new Secretary of State for Northern Ireland praised the tone, spirit, and constructive nature of the dialogue. The political parties will resume discussions tomorrow, but while the Mitchell review continues, the government sees itself as a facilitator, little more. PETER MANDELSON: The only way in which peace is finally going to be made is once the parties in Northern Ireland can agree on how to take forward the Good Friday Agreement. I can't impose it on them. NELSON: But if the review fails, the Government has a dilemma. It'll want to put the Good Friday agreement on hold so the parties have more time to sort out their differences. But Peter Mandelson may not delay some aspects, such as RUC reform, exactly the ones Unionists don't want. FOSTER: It would be very sad in fact to see the agreement failing. I wouldn't want to see it failing but we cannot accept it just under any terms. McLAUGHLIN: Regrettably we don't have the political institutions, but we may have them sooner than you think if it's made clear by the two Governments that they're not going to allow the entire process to grind to a halt. MALLON: Good Friday Agreement just didn't happen on Good Friday, it was a distillation of political wisdom over thirty years, and political experience of thirty years. The principles within it will stand up, the type of arrangements that are contained in it are the only arrangements that will work so it's not a matter of then somehow or another looking for an alternative to the Good Friday Agreement; the matter will be how to ensure that that Good Friday Agreement is made to work. And it is then with the two governments in those circumstances to actually make it work and I, it is my belief that they can do that if they so decide to do it with conviction. NELSON: For the moment this is still the way many border areas in County Fermanagh are policed, a source of bitter resentment to Republican and nationalist communities in particular. Whether it continues will depend on the flexibility of the political parties and the success of the talks. Both sides know what is being asked of them - but the question remains: can either move without alienating their own supporters?