Sinn Féin support for the PSNI is achievable by the deadline, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor
The agenda for the three days of talks involving the two governments and the Northern Ireland political parties which begin in St Andrews in Scotland tomorrow runs to about 50 pages including annexes and rather esoteric legislative detail, but it could all be distilled down to two issues - policing and powersharing.
It's for Gerry Adams to deliver the first, Ian Paisley the second. The signs are coming, not only from Sinn Féin, but from senior Dublin and senior security sources as well, that Mr Adams is prepared to call sooner rather than later - and possibly even before November 24th - a Sinn Féin ardfheis to decide on whether republicans should endorse the PSNI.
Think for a moment what that means. If a police officer feels comfortable patrolling along the Falls Road then, without ifs, buts or wherefores, the war is over. As the SDLP's Séamus Mallon persistently said, "It's all down to policing".
Dr Paisley met the Catholic primate, Archbishop Seán Brady, at Stormont yesterday. The significance of that encounter is perhaps lost on many people in the Republic. But if they had listened to BBC Radio Ulster yesterday, with genuinely shocked Paisley supporters ringing in to wonder how he could have dealings with, as callers said, a representative of "the drunken harlot" or the "abomination" which is the "Church of Rome", then they would have caught the import here.
The symbolism of Dr Paisley shaking the archbishop's hand wasn't so much in what the meeting said to Catholics and nationalists but what it said to that large rump of Protestant fundamentalists who comprise the DUP support base: if Dr Paisley can sit down cordially with Dr Brady, then who would he not sit down with?
We now seem to be down to the "how and the when" of a deal, as Tony Blair's chief spokesman said yesterday. The how is Sinn Féin accepting the PSNI and the DUP committing itself to working with all parties including Sinn Féin. There are other issues such as some fine-tuning of the Belfast Agreement, but that seems manageable, if not over the next three days then surely by November 24th if the genuine will is there.
A complication is to reconcile the differences between Sinn Féin and the DUP over when policing and justice powers would be devolved to a Northern Executive, with Sinn Féin requiring a clear and early date for this devolution, and the DUP wanting the issue left open-ended. This will be a key debating matter this week in St Andrews. The when of a deal is where it gets complicated, and where there are differences of emphasis between Dublin and London. There was some concern in Government circles about a piece written here last week which posited an agreement which London thought was possible.
This was a contingency arrangement in which by November 24th Sinn Féin and the DUP, the main players, would sign off on a deal whereby they would commit themselves respectively to support policing and to share power at a specific date after the actual deadline. The deal would be before or by November 24th, the implementation sometime after. This rang some alarm bells in Dublin that London, under DUP pressure, was undermining the notion of a deadline, notwithstanding that the British side repeatedly stressed that agreement must be copper-fastened by November 24th.
A senior Dublin source made clear his conviction that all issues could be resolved by the deadline. And this is where it gets interesting because surely it is implicit in that belief that Mr Adams would call a Sinn Féin ardfheis before November 24th to seek support for the PSNI. Why is it implicit? Because, as Dr Paisley and his deputy Peter Robinson have made clear, there is no hope of the DUP sharing power if Sinn Féin has not made that great leap of faith on policing. The DUP just about might jump together with Sinn Féin on powersharing and policing but it seems a dead cert it won't jump before Sinn Féin.
The historic prize of Sinn Féin support for the police now appears achievable, possibly by the deadline.