Sinn Féin has said it is committed to the restoration of Stormont and to being part of a new policing dispensation in Northern Ireland.
Policing spokesman Gerry Kelly signalled a fresh examination of party policy at a conference on policing and justice in Belfast at the weekend.
In his opening address, he explicitly linked development of Sinn Féin's stance to efforts to end direct rule. Both governments insist suspension of Stormont cannot end unless republicans support policing and justice.
Mr Kelly said: "The British and Irish governments have said that they intend making a serious effort to resurrect the political institutions. We are also committed to achieving and being part of the new policing dispensation. No half-measures or three-quarter measures will do."
Referring to the failed attempt in December 2004 to restore Stormont, Mr Kelly claimed Sinn Féin and the DUP had reached "agreement between the parties on the departmental model and the powers to be transferred".
He also said they had agreed the "enactment by the British government of the legislation to give full expression to this transfer of powers; and a DUP commitment to a short timeframe for the actual transfer of powers on policing and justice". He continued: "Then the party president would propose to the ardchomhairle that it calls a special ardfheis to decide Sinn Féin's position on new policing arrangements. That situation has not changed. It is not Sinn Féin but others who are delaying progress."
No one wants a new beginning to policing and justice more than the nationalist and republican people of west Belfast, west Tyrone and south Armagh, he said.
He said elements in the police continued to frustrate a new political and policing dispensation in Northern Ireland.
"Our political enemies, in the institutions of this state, do not want a Shinner about the place. They don't want the Good Friday agreement. They don't want change. They don't want acceptable policing institutions and practices which would see Sinn Féin in there policing the police; all of this is anathema to our political enemies."
As "political activists", he continued, republicans could not "be viewed in isolation from other key issues such as the stability of the interdependent institutions, equality and human rights, demilitarisation, the ending of discrimination, collusion and so on. But we will pursue proper policing and justice with all our energy".
In a key section of his address, he added: "At the core of our position [ on policing] is the establishment of a threshold which enables the creation of democratically accountable representative civic policing and the consignment of political policing to the dustbin of history along with the other failures of the past."
He also called for reform of policing in the Republic, linking reform of policing on both sides of the Border to political progress.
He concluded: "This is a critical year in the peace process and political process."