Vincent Browne: It was Peter Mandelson who scuppered a final resolution of the Northern conflict. His conceit advised him that he could improve on the Patten Commission proposals on policing, and the chance to tie in the republican movement to a final settlement was lost. Curiously, the issue of policing seems tangential to negotiations at Hillsborough now.
A deal on policing equals a deal on decommissioning, a deal on punishment beatings, a deal on the ending of the "war", a deal on sanctions and a deal on whatever else the ingenuity of obstructive unionists can come up with.
If Sinn Féin is tied into support for the police force in Northern Ireland, it is tied into the dissolution of the IRA. What possible function could the IRA have, if Sinn Féin accepts that the sole protector of the nationalist community is the police, if it accepts the enforcement of the rule of law by the police is paramount, if it acknowledges that only those arms held by the security forces can legitimately be held? That is in addition to accepting - as Sinn Féin has done already - that the constitutional position of Northern Ireland can be changed only with the consent of a majority of the people.
The legitimacy of a police force trumps the legitimacy of any "republican army", and Peter Mandelson screwed up that chance for lasting peace by fiddling with the Patten recommendations - he knew better. He let Sinn Féin off the hook. More important than anything else now is that Sinn Féin is put back on that hook and whatever it takes to finesse that should be taken.
And this includes the further reconstitution of the police force to ensure it deals, as a matter of course, with loyalist viciousness. The Irish News recently reported that since the signing of the Good Friday agreement 2,000 Catholics have been driven from their homes, and it seems the police have stood idly by.
The tests of Sinn Féin's acceptance of the police force are obvious:
Does it call on everyone with information on the whereabouts of illegal arms to inform the police?
Does it acknowledge that the sole agency for dealing with criminality is the police force?
Does it call on everyone to give information to the police force about all criminality it is aware of or suspect, including information on the existence and operation of illegal organisations?
Does it call for the disbandment of all paramilitary organisations and accept that the new police force must secure the disbandment of all such organisations, if necessary?
If the answers to all these is in the affirmative, Sinn Féin accepts the new police force. If there is equivocation in answering any, it does not. And the changes to the police force that Sinn Féin continues to demand should be accepted as a quid pro quo for unequivocal support for the force.
The issues in contention at Hillsbor- ough - whether the war is over, whether there is to be completion of IRA decommissioning, sanctions - are all subsidiary. The key issue, indeed now the only issue, is the unequivocal acceptance of the police force as the sole legitimate enforcer of law and order. The issue of amnesty for republicans on the run is also incidental and merely procedural.
It is fair that the unequivocal acceptance of the police force and of the rule of law be a requirement for participation in government. If Sinn Féin passes that test, that should be the end of it. If it is doesn't, it should not be part of government.
The Hillsborough meeting may be significant for another and unrelated reason. It may be Tony Blair's last involvement in Irish affairs. He has made a crucial contribution to the negotiation of the Good Friday agreement and to its survival so far, but, by the time another such meeting is convened, he may be removed from the centre of these affairs because of his Iraqi escapade.
Bono is probably right to depict Tony Blair simply as "sincerely wrong" on Iraq. The depictions of him as George Bush's poodle seem wildly inappropriate. Perhaps the explanation for his abandonment of the strategy that won him such success in Northern Ireland (negotiation and patience) is just that he was profoundly struck by how September 11th showed the brittleness of world security and the necessity to confront the fountainheads of these threats to world security; among them being, he convinced himself, Saddam Hussein. It seems right now a misjudgment of enormous and potentially catastrophic proportions.
Having sought to tie the US into the international order as represented by the United Nations, he is about to join in the subversion of that order by supporting the US in going it alone. He has damaged the cohesion of the European Union. He has torn apart his own political party and maybe his government.
But, however much we may stand in dismay over his role in that war we must acknowledge the contribution he has made to peace in Ireland and the personal commitment he made to that.