POLICING: 'Fierce rioting broke out again last night in north and west Belfast and in the Bogside in Derry following further police arrests of suspected dissident republicans.
In an emergency statement to the Assembly the co-Justice Minister, Mr Gerry Kelly condemned the violence and insisted continued terrorist activity by the Continuity IRA would not be tolerated. The Deputy First Minister, Mr Gerry Adams, showed his support for the beleaguered minister in the chamber before flying to London with First Minister Mr Peter Robinson to press Mr Blair for additional police manpower.'
Fantasy? No, this is what serious republicans know might one day happen if and when Sinn Féin finally signs up for a policing dispensation in Northern Ireland.
Against American expectations that this issue would have been settled by now - and in the most meaningful way possible mark the "act of completion" of the IRA's war - Sinn Féin chairman Mr Mitchel McLaughlin has signalled this is a stand-alone issue which may not be included in any package designed to restore the suspended institutions of government.
Yet many people will find it hard to conceive or believe an "acts of completion" deal which fails to address the surely unsustainable position in which a major political party fails to support the policing of the polity. In his big Belfast speech last October, Mr Blair seemed to anticipate a resolution of the policing issue as a central ingredient of any final settlement in the peace process. He said: "For republicans there is one very simple thing moving them in the direction of progress. Leave aside the disagreement over aspects of policing. They want to join." However, and crucially, the Prime Minister continued: "But the concept of republicans on the policing board, of young republicans becoming police officers, while maintaining an active paramilitary organisation, outside of the law, only needs to be stated to be seen as an absurdity." So Mr Blair made clear the British view that the Provisional IRA must cease to function as a paramilitary organisation before Sinn Féin could take their seats on the Policing Board.
Sinn Féin's enthusiasm for devolution of policing powers is of a piece with its determination to significantly erode the role and power of a British Secretary of State answerable to the House of Commons, and to see that power and accountability increasingly vested in the triumvirate of the Policing Board, the Ombudsman and the Oversight Commissioner.
While accepting that, as per the Patten proposals, London would in any event retain responsibility for "national security" - and "securocrats" might be sitting in the office next door while they discuss policing matters with the Chief Constable or whoever - Sinn Féin leaders counter this can not be a cover for the British security services continuing "the war" against the republican community.
And of course central to any deal on policing will be the British Government's approach to the political (as opposed to the religious) allegiance of new recruits to the PSNI, and the so-called "Crossmaglen test" by which Sinn Féin expects delivery of the Patten promise to provide a policing service representative of the community it polices.
Beyond the vexed question of amnesty for republicans still 'On The Run' (OTR's ) other key Sinn Féin demands concern the proposed right of the Policing Board to order retrospective inquiries into past events, and the Patten proposal that all existing as well as new officers in the PSNI should swear the new oath explicitly committing to uphold human rights and accord equal respect to all individuals and their traditions and beliefs.
A common assumption seems to be that Sinn Féin really doesn't mean the half of it, and that a few tweaks to the Policing Bill currently going through Westminster will be enough to do the trick.
But Sinn Féin spokesmen have been wholly consistent in rejecting the outcome of the Weston Park negotiations of July 2001, and their agenda would suggest the British government will need to produce a much more radical and comprehensive legislative framework if republicans are to buy-in to the "new beginning to policing" promised by the Belfast Agreement.