WHEN the British government publishes a discussion paper on policing in Northern Ireland this month it will be examined in the first place for signs of its intentions with regard to all party political talks.
The policing issue is as inherently political as the question of the future system of governing Northern Ireland, and the White Paper will give, an indication of whether or not this is going to be accepted.
Police reform, the entire nationalist community believes, is an issue which must be central to all party political talks and negotiations.
If the forthcoming White Paper attempts to pre empt such multilateral discussions on policing structures this may indicate deep British pessimism about the prospects for the talks. It could represent an attempt to decouple the sensitive policing issue from the substantive political settlement negotiations.
But if it is cleverly framed it will merely try to set out a balanced agenda on RUC reform for debate between the local parties, leaving them at least the impression that key elements of future policing arrangements can be negotiated and agreed between them.
The White Paper will thus have to give a lead, without laying down immutable principles which would be unacceptable to either community. This is a delicate exercise as, in the usual course of events, the discussion document should be followed later this year by draft legislation for debate in the British parliament.
The talks process, should it get under way in time, would be challenged to produce agreement which would then provide a powerful input into the drafting of the new legislation.
Such would be the ideal sequence of events. A pragmatic analysis of the deadlock over RUC reform since the ceasefires, however, may lead government policymakers to conclude that they must take a more strongly interventionist line and present the Northern parties with a finished, or almost finished, package of reforms.
That might please no one, but it could short circuit a highly divisive and inevitably drawn out political wrangle.
Either way, the pressure is on and movement on the policing issue cannot be delayed much longer. Millions of words have been spoken and written about the issue since the 1994 ceasefires and beforehand.
The Police Authority for Northern Ireland (PANI) has engaged in an elaborate public consultation exercise, at least partly aimed at anchoring its own role as an independent body "standing impartially between the police and the politicians".
The RUC, in turn, initiated its own consultation process, anxious to counteract the scarcely disguised PANI view that the police were defaulting on their duty of accountability to the community.
The community at large, meanwhile, seems to have settled back into the old entrenched positions, separated along lines of sectarian or political division.
In broad terms, republicans and their supporters want the RUC abolished and a new police service negotiated; the SDLP and the wider nationalist community want wide ranging reforms to be agreed in tandem with political negotiations on a lasting political settlement; the unionist majority wants no significant change in the status quo.
Responsibility for effective change inevitably devolves back on government, and the British government has not so far been able to reconcile the conflicting principles involved.
These were clearly set out in the Hunt Report, which followed the 1969 civil disturbances. This noted that the RUC had been required to perform a dual role, being responsible for security duties of a military nature as well as all the duties associated in the public mind with police forces.
"Policing in a free society depends on a wide measure of public approval and consent. This has never been obtained in the long term by military or paramilitary means", Hunt observed.
The recent SDLP paper on policing also underlined this, noting: "Since the creation of Northern Ireland there has always been a fully armed police force, operating frequently in a military fashion. As a result, the gun and policing have unfortunately become synonymous.
The problem is that every one of the practical measures which the SDLP, as representative of the nationalist community, set out as being necessary has encountered implacable opposition from unionists.
These include the replacement of the name Royal Ulster Constabulary with "The Northern Ireland Police Service"; change of uniform; a recasting of the police officers oath of allegiance; civilianisation of the police service; the devising of neutral symbols and emblems; and a new focus on basic human rights along with the repeal of Special Powers legislation.
The forthcoming White Paper may indeed address some of these issues - according to a report in the Daily Telegraph yesterday it will attempt to define more clearly in law the requirement that individual police officers should act "in due deference to the two traditions in Northern Ireland".
A crucial aspect of the paper, however, will be its proposals in regard to the future relationship between the Chief Constable and the Police Authority.
For the past six months PANI has engaged in a series of meetings with British government officials on the need to retain and clearly define the authority's powers and responsibilities for ensuring police accountability.
"The fundamental reason for having a Police Authority at all is to provide an important part of the mechanism or structure which provides and channels that accountability", wrote the PANI chairman, Mr David Cook, in a recent report.
When those meetings concluded in December most points had been agreed, but the publication of the White Paper was postponed while the British government undertook to consider further the PANI submissions on two outstanding key principles.
One of these centred on PANI's concern that its main remit under the Police Act (Northern Ireland) 1970 should be preserved. This charges it, broadly, to "secure the maintenance of an adequate and efficient police force".
The other involves PANI's strong submission that the £621 million sterling policing budget should remain the responsibility of the authority.
The White Paper will reveal something of British government thinking on the finer political points concerning the structure and management of the expected new policing order.
For most nationalists, however, the basic statistic which reveals that the RUC's 12,000 strong force remains 92 per cent Protestant in make up will continue to colour their conclusions on a police service that has yet to demonstrate that loyalty to the impartial implementation of the law should take precedence over loyalty to one tradition's definition of the state.