It is so simple. All that needs to be done to secure lasting peace in Northern Ireland is for the Ulster Unionists to sign up to the deal which has been brokered by Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern, with backstage prompting from President Bill Clinton, and a new era of trust and co-operation will emerge.

If only David Trimble would stop prevaricating, if only these red-faced men in ridiculous sashes and funny accents would cease marching about all over the place, if only the Protestant population would learn to trust their own Prime Minister when he tells them the war is over, that the IRA will hand in their weapons, that Sinn Fein will be responsible members of a power-sharing government in the Province, then we could get on with the celebration party.

Doesn't everyone in the whole of the island of Ireland just yearn for an end to hostilities? The vast majority of them most certainly do. But not all are convinced of the sincerity of those making the promises. And not all the doubters are confined to the North.

In the Irish Republic for the past several weeks, the police force has been frantically attempting to find the bodies, or bits of them, of several people, most of them young men, tortured, killed, and thrown away by the IRA for offences imagined or real. There is no high regard for Sinn Fein's Gerry Adams or

Martin McGuinness or the IRA among the middle classes of Dublin 4. In a booming Irish economy which relies heavily on tourism, pictures of hooded men carrying guns are not good for business.

As a solicitor put it to me when I was there last week: ''Please God their party never comes into government in this country.'' Former President Eamonn de Valera, the man most responsible for the creation of the Republic, felt the same - he banned them and hunted them down with considerable vigour for he knew what a threat to democracy they represented.

No-one doubts for a moment Tony Blair's burning desire for a political settlement in the North. One is perfectly entitled to question the manner in which he has set out to achieve that laudable aim.

The Ulster Unionists are by nature prickly and suspicious people. That, perhaps, is understandable when they have seen so many of their neighbours blown to bits before their very eyes. David Trimble comes across as something of a cold fish, yet it is impossible to dispute his democratic principles.

His delegation at last week's talks contained no person who had been convicted of murder or for being a member of an illegal organisation or for making bombs. This most certainly could not have been said of the Sinn Fein negotiators.

The Unionists, which is their right like any of us in the United Kingdom, wish their country to remain part of Britain. They are being asked to share power, and have indicated that they are prepared to do so, with a party dedicated to making Ulster part of the Republic. That is a pretty major concession in my book.

Mr Trimble's people have also had to swallow the fact that convicted murderers and bombers have been released early from prison as a price to be paid for peace. And what have the IRA given in return? So far, not a single shotgun.

Don't worry about that, our dashing PM protests, they have signed up to decommissioning and if they don't behave they will be punished. Yet only last week Pat Docherty, the vice-president of Sinn Fein, stated clearly: ''This does not mean decommissioning will start. It is all a cod. It's not about decommissioning.'' If you were living in Belfast or Bangor and read these words, would you sleep easy in your bed? There are good reasons why law-abiding Ulster folk do not always jump to Tony Blair's promptings. He has broken promises to them before.

On the very day of the referendum on the Good Friday Agreement the PM made this pledge. ''Representatives of parties intimately linked to paramilitary parties can only be in a future Northern Ireland government if it is clear that there will be no more violence and the threat of violence is gone. That doesn't just mean decommissioning but all the bombings, killings, beatings, and an end to targeting and all the structures of terrorism.''

The beatings have gone on, so have the killings and decommissioning has still not started, so why are Sinn Fein still being given seats in the Ulster Executive? Because they told Tony Blair to get lost.

Ulster people are also angered by the PM's decision to set up a commission of inquiry into the events of Bloody Sunday. The colonel who commanded the British troops that day said on the radio yesterday: ''What about Bloody Tuesday, Bloody Warrington, Bloody Hyde Park, or Bloody Omagh - is anyone going to have

public inquiries into them?'' Don't think so.

Mr Blair's spinners tried another tack on Monday - they warned prisoner releases could be halted. No-one in Ulster, on whatever side of the fence, believes that is a starter.

Sadly, what the British Government in general and Tony Blair in particular have done, is drive moderate Unionists back into the camp of the Rev Ian Paisley. It was he, not the Official Unionist candidate, who received the highest number of votes in the recent European elections, with a turn-out much higher than here. Written off more times than a bad debt, Paisley is still the spectre at the feast, a man capable of unleashing many demons.

The pressure is being piled on David Trimble to win the support of his party for the deal, much of it from those who would buy peace at any price. At the moment I simply do not see that happening.

And let us be quite clear about one thing - if Trimble can't sell it, nobody else can and nobody else will want to ruin their political career by trying.

A former Unionist leader, Brian Faulkner, lost his job by attempting to take his supporters where they did not wish to go.

So the Prime Minister, if he wants his place in history, better hang on to David Trimble. He may even have to tell his republican pals and the President of the mightiest nation on earth that unless the guns come in and a strict timetable is adhered to, then there will be no power-sharing executive.

An Irish journalist who had been covering the talks in the North told me that, at one point during a long day, the delegations of both Sinn Fein and the Ulster Unionists sat down to watch some of the tennis from Wimbledon and were engrossed by the match between Tim Henman and America's Jim Courier.

''Only they cheered for different sides,'' reported my informant. As they would.