AGAINST a background of renewed rioting and petrol bombing, the struggling Ulster peace process approaches a crucial juncture - that of the April 2 deadline for making last year's historic Good Friday Agreement Work.

But though the violence and the recent murders are ugly reminders of the sectarian divide that the peace talks are seeking to heal, the real pressure jeopardising the process and threatening to plunge Northern Ireland back into the abyss lies in the deadlock at the negotiating table.

The impasse is over Unionist insistence that the IRA must begin disarming before Sinn Fein can be admitted to government and Gerry Adams' insistence that this impossible.

And the risk is that if this situation remains after the deadline is reached, Sinn Fein's exclusion from government will bring down the whole process, the Good Friday deal will die and peace and even hope will be lost. The dread of this has now led the British and Irish prime minister and America's president to jointly urge Northern Ireland's leaders to overcome this deadlock and Tony Blair and his Irish counterpart, Bertie Ahern, are poised to hold crisis talks in Belfast next week to search for ways past the obstacles.

This is a clear sign of the desperate stage the process is now at and offers a frightening glimpse of the future should it fail.

But a year ago, when what became the Good Friday deal was in similar danger of being brought down by deadlock and many believed the two sides - with ages of hatred and bloodshed separating them - were too far apart ever to reach agreement, the opposite happened.

And, indeed, fuelled by the tremendous will of ordinary people in Ulster for lasting peace, this has at times when atrocities have been employed to try and wreck the peace process - notably that of the Omagh bombing - led to renewed and more determined eforts among Ulster's politicians to find compromise and make progress.

We must pray that once again this happens as the deadline creeps nearer amid this dangerous deadlock.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.