Northern Ireland's political leaders return to the negotiating table this week alongside British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Ireland's Bertie Ahern, with hardline parties vowing to use "no surrender" tactics that could kill the peace effort.
The Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the province's largest party, refuses to talk directly with Sinn Fein, the second-largest party, until the Irish Republican Army (IRA) disarms and declares its armed struggle for a united Ireland over.
The DUP's firebrand leader Ian Paisley, in a clear reference to the IRA, insisted the "rubbish has to be removed" before any progress in talks could be made.
DUP chairman Maurice Morrow stressed in Belfast last week that the party, which opposed the Good Friday peace accords of 1998, could block any deal for months or years in order to "get it right this time".
Sinn Fein, the political wing of the IRA, said it would talk with the DUP but concede no new ground at the high-level talks Thursday to Saturday at Leeds Castle in England.
While party leader Gerry Adams signalled last week that deal-making with the DUP was "inevitable" at some point, local lawmaker Francie Molloy expressed the view from Belfast: "Republicans in general are not in the mood for surrender."
Blair has warned both sides he will not continue to push for peace at all costs, after two years of intermittent failed talks between the belligerents.
"Two years on, the elements are still the same ... There has to be a complete and unequivocal end to violence, there has to be a willingness on that basis to share power," Blair said on Friday.
"There is no point in us continually having these meetings unless that will exists, and we will find out next week whether it really does."
Sinn Fein is calling for the full implementation of the Good Friday agreement, which effectively ended three decades of sectarian violence that killed nearly 3,300 people and injured more than 36,000.
The key plank of the deal, a power-sharing government including an executive and legislative assembly, was suspended in October 2002 over allegations of spying by the IRA, as the province was put back on direct rule from London.
Demands that will be put to Sinn Fein this week include a repeat call for the IRA to disarm under the watch of an international commission and in a way which can be believed by skeptical Unionists.
The IRA has been observing "a complete cessation of military activities" since August 1994, and given up some of its arsenal, but has resisted calls to give up armed struggle.
"We are waiting for the words `The war is over,'" said Ulster Unionist Party assemblyman Norman Hillis.
Sinn Fein's Molloy suggested the IRA would just disappear on its own if a political deal is made, but warned further stalemate could push the main republican paramilitary group to renew its campaign of violence.
Were he an IRA militant, he said, "if I was being denied my rights, I would have no problem in taking up arms again."
All parties at the table are also likely to urge Sinn Fein to sign up to the policing board -- a highly significant move that would signal approval of the reforms to the controversial force.
The 7,000-strong Police Service of Northern Ireland has revamped its name, uniform and recruitment process to redress a long history of anti-Catholic discrimination by the Protestant-dominated force, but republican paramilitaries continue to target Catholics who join the force.
"The only way for (Sinn Fein) to move forward is in the new policing," said Pat Ramsey, an assemblyman from the more moderate nationalist Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP), while a Northern Ireland political officer called any Sinn Fein approval "an historic move."
Both DUP and Sinn Fein chalk up their election wins last November in part to their tough no-compromise talk, and analysts fear they could upend the Leeds Castle summit with a similar show directed at voters ahead of a possible British general election next year.
In addition to Blair and Ahern, US envoy on Northern Ireland Mitchell Reiss is to attend the three-day summit.
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