PM Tony Blair and Bertie Ahern of Ireland gave a constructive push to Northern Ireland’s politicians on Thursday by summoning the elected assembly back into session and giving it a new November deadline for agreeing on a cabinet. That was the right response to IRA’s decision to renounce violence permanently.

Now it is up to the leading parties in Ireland’s two main communities, the Democratic Unionists among the Protestants and Sinn Fein among the Roman Catholics, to use the intervening months to overcome the remaining obstacles. But the power-sharing assembly and cabinet that were intended to be the main vehicles of Irish self-government have lain dormant, their operations repeatedly suspended by British governments that feared that distrustful Protestant parties would refuse to share power with Sinn Fein. Those suspensions did not do much to solve the problems. But they had at least some justification during the many years that the IRA engaged in provocative criminality.

However, over the past year, the IRA has gone a long way toward cleaning up its act. It should now finish the job. Meanwhile, the Democratic Unionists should muster the courage to ollow the lead of London and Dublin and let Northern Ireland’s self-rule institutions function effectively.