By NiallO’Dowd

FRIDAY the 13th was perhaps an inauspicious date to announce a major breakthrough on the Northern Irish peace talks, but the St. Andrews Agreement was truly a remarkable accomplishment.

Both the Irish and British leaders, Bertie Ahern and Tony Blair, brought forward a carefully crafted document which has succeeded in providing a roadmap to removing the major obstacles to a negotiated final settlement of the Northern issue.

The notion that the Reverend Ian Paisley and Martin McGuinness could soon be in lockstep as Northern Ireland’s first minister designate and deputy first minister designate would have belonged in a Grimm’s fairy tale up to a few years ago. Yet now it is possible that on November 24 we will witness that remarkable event.

Unfortunately, the agreement was hardly announced when Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party decided that they needed assurances that McGuinness would accept and support the PSNI, the Police Service of Northern Ireland, when he took his oath of office in November.

Sinn Fein, however, have long made it clear that any acceptance of the PSNI requires approval by the rank and file of the party at a special Ard Fheis (convention).

Paisley, it seems, was already reacting to negative reaction by some of his party hardliners to the deal. By insisting on McGuinness accepting the PSNI before the Sinn Fein convention he knew he was asking the impossible. Let us hope the issue can be resolved.

Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams and McGuinness already face the daunting task of convincing fellow Sinn Fein members to back the Ard Fheis to announce support for the PSNI.

There is no issue as vexed as that of policing in Northern Ireland. The old RUC was a 93% Protestant force which often acted as an armed wing of the Unionist politburo who ran the place until direct rule in 1972.

Thereafter, under direct rule from London the RUC became a hated symbol for most Nationalists of the excesses of a militarized state, a force which included many officers who thought little of shoot to kill policies or of forming liaisons with Loyalist murder gangs.

Not surprising then that many Sinn Fein supporters will see the PSNI as little more than dressing up a pig with some lipstick, yet retaining its overwhelmingly Protestant and Unionist bias.

Adams’ greatest battle will be to convince his own supporters to give the PSNI a chance. He can point to the Patten Commission, which did a truly remarkable job in laying out the parameters for a new and impartial police force, to the 50/50 recruitment policy which will ensure that Nationalists make up close to 30% of the force in the near future, and to the fact that Sinn Fein on policing boards will ensure far greater accountability.

The visceral hatred on the ground of the police, however, in many Nationalist areas, will take so much to overcome. Issues such as power sharing governments and grand plans for government fade beside the very real presence of a neighborhood police force whose predecessor, the RUC, was a watchword for crude sectarian intimidation and often much worse activities.

But it is hard to see no one walking away as a result of such a dramatic Sinn Fein change in policy. Doubtless the Sinn Fein leadership will lose some supporters in the Ard Fheis battle, and how many remains to be seen.

It is important that Sinn Fein hear from Irish America on this issue at this time, and that the message be one of strong support for what was agreed at St. Andrews. There is simply no other way forward.