"Representativeness" is the latest crunch word in Sinn Féin's determination to hold out for further concessions on policing, writes Frank Millar
Gerry Adams is right about one thing: the effort to salvage the Belfast Agreement will not be a single-issue negotiation. Monday's publication of the British Government's proposals for further policing reforms will have given Ulster Unionists a sharp reminder of last year's Weston Park summit. Against the advice of his most senior colleagues, David Trimble went there insisting there would be but one issue under discussion - IRA decommissioning.
The result, from the UUP's perspective, proved pretty disastrous. Mr Trimble was able to disown the agreement concluded by the British and Irish Governments covering a range of issues including the proposed amendment of Peter Mandelson's Police Act and an amnesty for fugitive or "on the run" terrorists. However, the suspicion remained that the UUP leader had been complicit in the Weston Park pact because it led directly to the IRA act of decommissioning reported by General de Chastelain, which in turn prompted Mr Trimble's successful bid, in defiance of a unionist majority, to resume office as First Minister.
Some UUP members of the Policing Board publicly fretted about the impact of further legislative change, threatening to quit the board if further concessions were granted to Sinn Féin. However, it has long been apparent that pro-agreement unionists were confused, if not divided among themselves, on this issue.
Shortly before the most recent meeting of the Ulster Unionist Council, senior party sources were privately dismissive of the threatened resignations, suggesting that the imminent British "concessions" would prove but "a fig-leaf to cover Sinn Féin's embarrassment at finally signing up for the Policing Board".
This more sophisticated take on the ongoing policing debate might seem the more consistent and logical from a pro-agreement unionist standpoint. However, if this was the UUP leadership's actual calculation, it would appear to confirm a double defeat for Mr Trimble at Weston Park.
By Mr Trimble's own recent account to the BBC's On The Record programme, he agreed to resume office on the promise of a process of IRA decommissioning, which he says stopped almost as soon as he returned as First Minister.
Also, it seems clear that the package of measures unveiled by Secretary of State Paul Murphy on Monday will not be enough to persuade Sinn Féin to endorse the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and take its place on the Policing Board.
The surprise is that anyone should be surprised, for Sinn Féin has been making this plain for the best part of the 16 months since Weston Park, and again in recent weeks, as the detail of the British proposals emerged piecemeal into the public domain.
Indeed a certain bemusement is detectable in the upper reaches of Sinn Féin at the widespread impression fostered over recent days that these proposals represent the British Government's contribution to the "big steps - IRA disbandment - acts of completion" debate following the suspension of the Stormont Assembly. Republicans have hardly concealed their view that, while marking some further progress, the latest proposals are the product of an old debate - at Weston Park, essentially between the British, Irish and the SDLP - which they had already discounted and which they told Tony Blair at the time would not perform the magic trick of getting Sinn Féin on-side the new policing dispensation.
So, as far as Mr Adams and his colleagues are concerned, the policing debate is far from over and unlikely, barring some as yet unforeseen and dramatic development, to be resolved this side of any Assembly election. Central to the remaining Sinn Féin agenda are the issues of accountability and "representativeness", in addition to the vexed question of the PSNI Special Branch and the ongoing role of the British security establishment.
For accountability, read a demand for a further significant shift in the balance of power as between the British Secretary of State and the Chief Constable, and the triumvirate of the Policing Board, Ombudsman and Oversight Commissioner.
Representativeness goes to the heart of republican concerns that, on current forecasts, as one spokesman puts it, "it might be 15 or 20 years before people in Ballymurphy, the Bogside or South Armagh see recognisable nationalists or republicans participating in the policing of their own communities".
The issue of the moment concerns the right of former prisoners to serve on District Policing Partnership Boards (DPPB), which Mr Murphy appears to make conditional on the awaited IRA "act of completion" in ceasing to be a paramilitary organisation. At one meeting in Downing Street, Mr Adams observed to Mr Blair that each of the republicans present would, by virtue of terrorist convictions, be barred from service on a DPPB while entitled to hold the highest ministerial office at Stormont. Indeed, one of those present joked yesterday that he would be eligible to serve as Justice Minister in the event of the fore-shadowed devolution of policing and justice powers.
Sinn Féin sees this as an anomaly and shows little sign of feeling under pressure to concede anything in order to have it corrected. Official British and republican sources say the question of former prisoners actually serving in the PSNI has not arisen. Recruitment procedures are standard across the UK, and one Whitehall insider yesterday quoted Chris Patten as saying he "couldn't see it happening". On the other hand, some, such as the Sinn Féin Lord Mayor of Belfast Alex Maskey, consider it crucial to any attempt to gain community acceptance of the police service.
Beyond this some British sources privately allow that questions might arise about the position of persons suspected of past republican involvement but who have never been convicted in the courts. However, they stress this is "some way down the road" and that a re-assessment of the significance of such intelligence would be possible only in a wholly new situation in which the paramilitaries had vacated the stage.
What is hardly in dispute between London and Dublin is that securing republican support for the police also means having republicans serve in it. If that sends a shiver down unionist spines, they may be even more alarmed at the potential implications for the exercise of British sovereignty in Sinn Féin's sudden enthusiasm for the devolution of policing powers as part of their determination to erode the role of the Secretary of State answerable to the British Parliament.
But then, as one Sinn Féin source offers cheerily, ultimately ending British sovereignty remains the name of the republican game. Indeed, some may find Sinn Féin's relative success in arguing that the Belfast Agreement provides the transition route to Irish unity reflected in the SDLP's reported readiness to have the form and structure of a united Ireland on the agenda for the Forum for Peace and Reconciliation, which convenes in Dublin this morning.
Despite their apparent agreement in 1998 on all of these issues, unionists, nationalists and republicans still speak different languages about different processes.