The Northern Ireland Secretary's address to the Northern Ireland Police Federation yesterday was interrupted by a protest from a member of the RUC.
As Dr Mo Mowlam rose to speak, Constable Gordon Thomas, stationed in Grosvenor Road RUC station in west Belfast, held up a newspaper listing the 300 RUC deaths over the past 30 years and then walked out.
Later he said most RUC officers had voted against the Belfast Agreement because of prisoner releases. Const Thomas had been in the RUC only 11 days in 1989 when a colleague in Co Tyrone was killed by a bomb underneath his car as his wife and children watched.
In her speech Dr Mowlam said she recognised the pain caused by the early release of paramilitary prisoners, but without prisoner releases there would have been no agreement. She said this was not a general amnesty. The releases would be decided by an independent body on a case-by-case basis.
Dr Mowlam is expected to announce the composition of the new policing commission, chaired by Mr Chris Patten, within the next 24 hours. She told the federation it would include Ms Kathleen O'Toole, a senior figure from the Massachusetts police service, Sir John Smith, from Scotland Yard, and Dr Maurice Hayes, the former Northern Ireland ombudsman.
Earlier the federation's chairman, Mr Les Rogers, told the Northern Secretary his members were "dismayed and appalled" at the decision on early releases.
"My federation has always held the view that the remission system was much too generous," he said.
"There are people in the Maze and Maghaberry prisons who, by any objective measurement, should not only not get out within the next two years, they should never get out."
He said the tightest possible licence arrangements should be imposed on those who would benefit from early releases. "Not only should there be no recidivism but they should not be allowed to consort publicly with other ex-prisoners either. Let's have no more utterly offensive reunions such as we saw by the Balcombe Street gang at the ardfheis or by Michael Stone at the Ulster Hall.
"In any other society serial killers are kept behind lock and key for life. It is a pity that for political expediency we should be an exception."
Turning to the proposed Commission on Policing, he said the federation saw the RUC as the best police service Northern Ireland could possibly have. He said that they had, with one exception, already met the commission's remit for an acceptable policy service for Northern Ireland.
"The exception, of course, is that we have not enough Catholics or women in the RUC," he said. "Any responsibility for current imbalances within the force can be laid fairly and squarely at the foot of the terrorists who specifically targeted serving police officers and even young people who talked about joining."