The US special adviser on Northern Ireland agreed to disagree with Sinn Féin yesterday over the party's refusal to join the Policing Board.
Mr Richard Haass, who has completed a series of meeting with the Policing Board, the Northern parties and government representatives in Dublin and London, said relations between him and Sinn Féin remained good despite their differences.
Following his meeting with Mr Gerry Adams and the North Belfast Assembly member Mr Gerry Kelly at Stormont, Mr Haass expressed the hope that Sinn Féin would eventually join the 19-member board which oversees new policing arrangements. He said policing arrangements would develop over time and that they were "not cast in cement. It has the potential to change like any other institution in any other society". "The test of political dialogue is your ability to handle the inevitable disagreements," he said.
But immediately afterwards Mr Adams said he was convinced his party's stance on policing was correct.
"The main focus of the meeting was on policing, the related issue of the ongoing loyalist campaign and the failure of the Police Service, in its present formation of the RUC, and the other British military agencies, and particularly the British governmet to face up to its responsibilities. Three hundred bomb attacks - does anybody think for one minute there would be the same response if republicans were involved? People know there is a different attitude by the British to loyalist violence than there is to republican violence."
Echoing sentiments expressed in a speech he made in New York last week, Mr Haass said he continued to view the glass of peaceful politics as half full, not half empty and he stressed the achievements made since his last visit to Northern Ireland in Sept ember.
"These have been extraordinary," he said. They included, he said, an act of decommissioning by the IRA, the establishment of the Police Service of Northern Ireland and agreement by the Policing Board of a new symbol for that service. However he referred to what he saw as "a thinness of Northern Ireland's political institutions". He also cited the lack of regular informal meetings between the parties, something which was the norm between political opponents in the US.
The Progressive Unionist Party Assembly member, Mr David Ervine, said Mr Haass had a point.
"We have failed miserably to implement the Good Friday agreement. We have refused to talk to each other at times of no crisis and only taken the opportunity when there is a crisis," he said.
The SDLP policing spokesman Mr Alex Attwood said: "The visit [by Mr Haass] is an affirmation the Policing Board is getting to grips with historic policing difficulties and future policing opportunities."