Adams urges supporters to take long-term view

Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams today warned supporters that there are "no short cuts to independence", saying that republicans must address the issue of policing.

In his first engagement since Sinn Féin embarked on an internal debate on whether it should pledge its support to the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI), the west Belfast MP told a republican commemoration in Co Fermanagh that the strategy his party was pursuing was "risky".

He urged Republicans to address the issue of policing with their long-term objectives in mind.

"Be sure of this, getting our strategy right on this is inevitably bound up with how we move forward beyond partition to the Republic," the Sinn Féin leader told the commemoration for two IRA members killed 50 years ago during a raid on a police barracks in Brookebrough.

"Despite major advances in recent years, Sinn Féin does not yet command sufficient political strength to realise our primary and ultimate aims.

"We do well to remember that struggles cannot be won without the support of people, and a huge battle for hearts and minds is still to be waged, to mobilise greater levels of popular support behind republican aims and objectives.

"There are no short cuts to independence and a new Ireland. Republican strategy today is about building political strength, popularising republican ideas and mobilising, organising and strategising how we achieve a free, united Ireland."

Mr Adams succeeded last Friday in persuading his party's national executive in Dublin to call a special conference of rank-and-file members later this month to debate their policy on policing on both sides of the border.

The Sinn Féin leader signalled that provided the Irish and British governments and Ian Paisley's Democratic Unionists responded positively, a motion would be put to the conference urging delegates to support the PSNI and the Gardaí.

Delegates would also be asked to endorse Sinn Féin representatives taking their seats on the Northern Ireland Policing Board and District Policing Partnerships.

The Sinn Féin move towards endorsing the PSNI, which is seen as being an essential ingredient for the setting up of a powersharing executive at Stormont this March, came after the British government put forward proposals that would see a new Policing and Justice Ministry established by May 2008.

Under the plan, a senior and a junior justice minister would be appointed after securing support in the Assembly on a cross-community vote.

Mr Adams said today that his party's strategic focus during negotiations had been to break the grip of the unionist elite, the Northern Ireland Office and British securocrats on political policing.

"The party leadership believes this represents a sustainable basis to deliver a new beginning to policing in the context of our strategic objectives, the full implementation of the Good Friday Agreement and moving the struggle closer to our primary aim of Irish independence, self-determination and sovereignty," he said.

"This strategic initiative presents a massive challenge for republicans but like all republican initiatives, it is risky.

"The Brookebrough raid was risky. Struggle of any kind is risky.

"We should remember that those who want to maximise change must be prepared to take the greatest risk."

The Sinn Féin leader claimed that his party brought the issue of policing into the heart of the negotiations that led to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement.

He said the party had done so because it was clear that peace could never be underpinned while the Royal Ulster Constabulary remained intact.

"The transfer of powers on policing and justice away from London and into Irish hands will be an advance for the democratic struggle on this island," he argued.

"That is why it has met so much resistance within the British and Union establishment.

"So for many reasons, republicans need to come at this issue strategically.

"The big question we all need to ask ourselves is: are our republican objectives more achievable if we secure a level playing field set out in the Good Friday Agreement?

"The answer to this question and others like it is 'yes'."

The west Belfast MP said republicans had for years stayed outside policing structures because that was the best way to bring about change.

Now, he claimed, getting involved in those structures was the best way to maximise change.

"Our intention, if the ard fheis (party conference) agrees with the ard chomhairle (national executive), is to ensure that no police officer ever again does what was done on our people without being held to account," he said.

"If the ard fheis accepts our proposal, Sinn Féin representatives will work to ensure that political policing, collusion and a 'force within a force' is a thing of the past and oppose any involvement by the British security service/MI5 in civic policing.

"Sinn Féin representatives will robustly support the demands for equality of treatment for all victims, effective truce recovery mechanisms, acknowledgement by the British state of its involvement in wrongdoing, including collusion with loyalist paramilitaries, and to ensure that there is no place in the PSNI for human rights abusers."

Mr Adams urged republicans to fully participate in the internal debate that could culminate in the special Árd Fheis later this month.

He said that everyone needed to have the room to express their views, and he vowed that Sinn Féin would talk to those who had been the victims of collusion, as well as the families of IRA members killed and republican veterans.