At the time of writing, calls are coming from every side for the IRA to clarify its position. David Trimble, with the breath of Jeffrey Donaldson on his collar, has been very vocal. Tony Blair, brow still garlanded from Iraq, says acts of completion must be made plain. The Alliance Party and the SDLP insist that republicans must remove the verbal roadblock to progress. In the south, PD leader Mary Harney says: “We don’t want weasel words, we want a clear statement.”

With so many verbal stones being showered on republicans, it’s heartening to note that the stonethrowers and their associates are themselves unstained by the sin of ambiguity.

1. David Trimble. The Good Friday Agreement, which Mr Trimble has signed, calls on all parties to “work constructively and in good faith with the Independent Commission”. Mr Trimble has left no room for doubt as to where he stands: he thinks the Independent Commission is a waste of space. The GFA also requires all parties to use “any influence they may have to achieve the decommissioning of all paramilitary arms.” Again, Mr Trimble has been the soul of clarity. He is not now doing, nor has he ever done, anything to help bring about the decommissioning of unionist paramilitary arms. Yes, this leaves him, not for the first time, in breach of the Good Friday Agreement; but the point is, he is so in a totally unambiguous way.

2. David Ervine. The PUP leader, with Billy Hutchinson, is the political voice of the UVF. Mr Ervine has been a constant voice calling for peace: “The only statement that matters is one declaring the IRA’s war is over. That is all we want to hear,” he says. You can’t get much clearer than that. Of course a lot of people, particularly defenceless Catholics, want to hear about some other things besides the IRA’s intentions – they want to know what unionist paramilitaries are planning to do. Since Mr Ervine spends so much time talking about the IRA, he naturally has less time to talk about UVF intentions. Be fair, though. He has addressed the UVF issue on occasion and always with total clarity. The UVF will not be decommissioning, disbanding, going away, any of that stuff, certainly not before the IRA does so and maybe not even then. What’s more, the UVF reserves the right to return to violence if it deems that the union with Britain is threatened. He may use big words but you know where you stand with David.

3. The British army. The most heavily armed group in the North, we have been told, stands ready to demilitarise in a disciplined, phased way between now and 2005. Within three years, it will reduce itself to 14 bases containing 5,000 men. (There was an earlier suggestion that it might go down to 4,000 men but that’s been cleared up.)

So there you are – the time it will take, the number of men involved, the number of bases – all present and accounted for. Admittedly it hasn’t been made clear why 5,000 English, Scots and Welsh soldiers should be sent to practise various ways of killing in bases here rather than back home in England, Scotland or Wales. But since no-one bothers to ask the question, the British army has no need to supply an answer.

4. Holders of licensed weapons. Commentators are agreed that there are more than 130,000 licensed weapons here, almost all of them in the hands of unionists. Since these are registered weapons, their owners are frank and up-front about possessing them. They’re also up-front about the fact that these weapons will not feature in any decommissioning/ demilitarisation moves, because they’re all needed to shoot crows. Again, numbers clear, position clear, language clear.

5. The British government. As the inventor of the word ‘decommissioning’, the British government has always been devoted to clear language; and as the Stevens report this week will show (if we’re allowed to read the relevant bits), it has been equally transparent in its dealings down the years with unionist paramilitaries. It has even committed itself to fostering effective language use among the native Irish, with its Good Friday Agreement promise to “explore urgently the scope for achieving more widespread availability of Teilifis na Gaeilige in Northern Ireland”.

Granted, the British government hasn’t followed through on any aspect of that promise, but that’s not the point. The point is, the British government promise about Irish language television is a clear one and its breach of that promise and the GFA equally transparent. No weasel words, no ambiguous actions.

How sad that republicans didn’t feel able to take a similar line.

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