Today is Coronation day, and naturally the Unionists want to see the Union flag hoisted. Equally naturally, Sinn Fein won't hear of it - unless the Irish tricolour flies alongside. That in turn is rejected by the Unionists.
Many onlookers in Britain will find all this despicably petty. But it would be hasty, and more than a little condescending, to dismiss the vital importance of national symbols in Ireland.
Nationality, after all, is what it is all about: 30 years of conflict and terror, and more than 3,250 lives lost, all boil down to which flag shall fly over the six counties.
It is a tribute to the new, albeit grudging, spirit of cooperation in Belfast, that neither faction is talking about the flag issue as a serious threat to the power-sharing executive, all of three days old in its latest incarnation. There are, alas, much darker clouds on the horizon.
The Northern Ireland secretary, Peter Mandelson, is under fierce and increasing pressure over his police bill, designed to implement the radical reforms spelled out in the Patten report. The Unionists want to retain the name and insignia of the Royal Ulster Constabulary - symbolism again - while Sinn Fein and the more pragmatic Social Democratic and Labour party are determined to have a new force called the Police Service of Northern Ireland.
Republicans and nationalists suspect that Mandelson is prepared to water down the police reforms to keep the Unionists sweet. The Irish government shares that concern.
The first minister of the fragile executive, David Trimble, would dearly like to extract more concessions on the police issue, to suppress a rumbling rebellion in his own Unionist ranks. He must also be looking over his shoulder at Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionist party, which is spearheading the loyalist anti-power sharing movement.
Under the complex formula for distributing power around the parties in the Northern Ireland assembly, the DUP has been given two departments to run. Its ministers, Peter Robinson and Nigel Dodds, have taken up their posts and the fat salaries which go with them, but say they do not accept the doctrine of collective responsibility.
They will not attend government meetings with Sinn Fein ministers. Even more provocatively, they say they will resign after a month or so, handing on their ministries to DUP colleagues who will then themselves resign.
It has now emerged that each time a Northern Ireland minister resigns, he or she is entitled automatically to three months' severance pay. The DUP says that this nice little earner will go into a campaign fund to bring down the whole power-sharing structure.
Trimble and his SDLP deputy, Seamus Mallon, have summoned the two DUP ministers to a meeting on Monday. Robinson says he won't go, because he will be too busy earning his other fat salary as an MP in Westminster.
The problem for the pro-agreement parties is that they cannot gang up on the DUP and kick it out of the devolved government without undermining the central tenet of power-sharing - and setting a dangerous precedent for future exclusions in more dubious causes.
BR> Useful links:
Guardian Unlimited special report
Ulster Unionist party
Democratic Unionist party
Sinn Fein
Social Democratic and Labour party
Good Friday agreement
Belfast Telegraph
Irish Times
Irish News
The Path to Peace
BBC history of Northern Ireland
