AMID the fast-gathering clouds, less than 48 hours before the plug is set to be pulled on power-sharing in Ulster and as the Northern Ireland peace process faces its gravest crisis yet, does there come a saviour in the form of the Bishop of Derry?

Certainly, some operable initiative is needed now to rescue Ulster from the ominous threat of whatever comes next if the province's eight-week-old devolved government is suspended because of the IRA's obstruction of the decommissioning of terrorist weapons.

And the offer by Derry's Dr Seamus Hegarty to end the dangerous impasse by acting as the guarantor for the weapons of the IRA and, indeed, other paramilitary groups is one that all sides might accept because of its extra-political nature.

For if the IRA is somehow determined to save face by refusing to capitulate to the elements of the peace process that it has long seen as its enemies - the British government and the Ulster unionists - then this separate device offered by the Bishop of Derry ought to accommodate them.

But Dr Hegarty's extraordinary and unprecedented intervention shows just how perilous is the juncture that the peace process is now at.

As the IRA's refusal to disarm triggers the British government's suspension of the new Northern Ireland executive and assembly we even have Sinn Fein's beleaguered and exhausted president, Gerry Adams, threatening to quit and walk away from the process if Stormont is shut down.

Yet desperate as the situation now is, there is only one key to unlocking it - the surrender of the weapons, or at least the start of it.

There can be no democracy in Ulster and no safe peace if one party, purportedly sharing the quest for a political settlement, retains its guns, no matter how long they stay silent.

It is the doubt that the IRA's persistent refusal to hand over even a bullet throws on its own sincerity that has brought this crisis - and the dread of what may follow.

The Bishop of Derry puts them to the test while across Ireland the people pray for the peace to be saved.

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