Sinn Fein's twin tactics on policing - Durkan

Sinn Fein will eventually sign up to Northern Ireland’s new policing structures on the back of others’ work on the Police Board, Stormont Deputy First Minister Mark Durkan claimed today.

As the third drive in the province for recruits to the new Police Service of Northern Ireland prepared to get under way, the leader of the nationalist SDLP claimed in St Louis, Missouri, that a view was taking hold in Irish America that Sinn Fein’s opposition to the police was purely tactical.

‘‘Based on the questions I was getting in Washington, that would have very much been the premise,’’ the Foyle MLA said.

‘‘I have making the point to people that Sinn Fein are running two lines in relation to policing.

‘‘On the one hand they say in a sort of legalistic way: ‘We are not going on the Policing Board while the current legislation remains. There will have to be changes to the legislation’.

‘‘On the other hand they run a line of attack on the SDLP with a litany of issues which they say are wrong and have to be changed.

‘‘So they have the option when the legislation is changed as a result of the commitment we got in the Weston Park talks last year of saying:

‘The legislation is now changed, we can now go on the board’ or they could decide for their own tactical reasons that they do not want to go on it and at that stage they will rely on the litany of other issues.

‘‘I would have to point out many of the issues they are listing are erroneous and have nothing to do with the Patten reforms and in some cases, their arguments contradict the Patten recommendations.

‘‘There is that double line they are running and people in the States are noting that but I think we will see Sinn Fein moving to take membership of the Policing Board and will do so on the basis of developments hard won by the SDLP and others on the board.’’