SAOIRSE32

Guardian

· Sinn Féin deal could meet unionist demands
· Hain moves to reassure both sides over powers

Will Woodward, chief political correspondent
Friday December 29, 2006
The Guardian

Efforts to restore power-sharing in Northern Ireland received a boost last night when Gerry Adams called for a special Sinn Féin conference which could see an end to the party’s opposition to policing.

Mr Adams, the party president, said he would put a motion to the national executive in Dublin today on policing, the key sticking point for Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist party. Britain and Ireland hailed the move as potentially historic.

If Mr Adams’s motion is accepted, Sinn Féin wants the two governments and the DUP to “respond positively” ahead of a policing conference next month, well in time for elections in March. The DUP have demanded Sinn Féin accept the writ of the police service in Northern Ireland as the price of sharing power.

Mr Adams’s move follows a round of intensive negotiations before and after Christmas involving the main parties, Tony Blair, taioseach Bertie Ahern and Northern Ireland secretary Peter Hain.

It is understood Mr Hain has reassured Sinn Féin about his intention to deliver control of the police service to the devolved government within a year of the restored assembly, taking it away from Whitehall. Mr Hain has also negotiated on the use of plastic bullets, signalling they would be limited to where the lives of police officers are endangered, and a diminished role for MI5.

The DUP remains nervous about devolving police powers. But Mr Hain also moved yesterday to smooth unionist anxieties about the prospect of Sinn Féin’s policing spokesman Gerry Kelly, a convicted IRA bomber, taking over the portfolio in the Northern Ireland executive. Under a new proposal, Mr Hain would legislate for the holder of the post to require support from a majority of unionist and republican assembly members until 2011.

In practice, as with the election of the assembly speaker, this would virtually rule out either Sinn Féin or the DUP taking the post. It would most likely be handed to a member of the Ulster Unionists or the moderate nationalist SDLP.

In his statement, Mr Adams said the party would hold an “intensive period of discussion” in the runup to the conference. “I don’t want to underestimate the difficulties that this issue presents for many nationalists and republicans,” he said. “However, the achievement of a new beginning to policing, as promised in the Good Friday agreement, would be an enormous accomplishment. And I believe that we have now reached the point of taking the next necessary step.”

British ministers recognise that the Sinn Féin leader has taken a lot of internal party heat over the issue, after decades of opposition to the Royal Ulster Constabulary, the predecessor of the police service of Northern Ireland. But senior British officials said Sinn Féin still had to demonstrate a commitment to policing.

Mr Hain said last night: “We have worked hard over the last few weeks, with the prime minister intensively involved, to achieve progress and there is the potential now for a historic breakthrough which would leave no excuse for any unionist not to share power with Sinn Féin when the assembly is restored on March 26.”

If Mr Adams’s motion is delivered, Mr Hain said, it would be “on a par, if not even more historic than when the IRA gave up the armed struggle on July 28 last year”.

Mr Ahern last night “welcomed an encouraging and significant development”. Mr Blair’s official spokesman said: “For the first time in Northern Ireland there is now the prospect that all political parties and all sections of the community will support the police and the rule of law.”

Statement

“Eight years ago … we put the demand for a new beginning to policing at the top of the political agenda. Since that time progress has been made in a series of negotiations with the British government. In recent days and weeks the Sinn Féin leadership stepped up our contact with the British government on this issue, including over Christmas. Considerable progress has been made during these discussions …

“I will be proposing that the Ard Chomhairle [national executive] convene a special Ard Fheis [conference] … and I will put a motion to that effect. If the Ard Chomhairle agrees to that motion and others including the two governments and the DUP leadership respond positively, the Ard Fheis will go ahead in January.”

Irish Times

*Via Newshound

Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams will later today begin the process of changing his party’s position on support for the PSNI, write Dan Keenan and Gerry Moriarty in Belfast

Warning in advance that “no one should underestimate how big a step this is”, he has called his party’s ardchomhairle meeting to debate the convening of a special ardfheis on policing. The meeting will take place in Dublin today.

Long-held republican policy on policing is a key obstacle to power-sharing between Sinn Féin and the DUP and hindering efforts by Dublin and London to restore Stormont next March.

In a statement issued yesterday after exhaustive talks involving Taoiseach Bertie Ahern, prime minister Tony Blair and his officials, Mr Adams said “considerable progress” on policing issues had now facilitated the meeting.

“If the ardchomhairle agrees to that motion and others, including the two governments and the DUP leadership, respond positively, the ardfheis will go ahead in January.”

Under a formula devised in the recent talks, a policing model was created based on a proposal tabled by the DUP before Christmas. It means that a department of justice will be established with a minister with full cabinet powers and a junior minister, most likely from the Ulster Unionist Party and the SDLP.

These ministers will be elected on the so-called “50/50/50″ system whereby the ministers must first win at least 50 per cent support of the Assembly members to include 50 per cent support of unionists and 50 per cent support of nationalist members.

However, there is still uncertainty over the time frame for transferring policing and justice powers to the Stormont Executive. The governments believe this formula makes it possible to establish the department by May 2008, as envisaged in the St Andrews Agreement. They hope that Sinn Féin, by initiating this move on policing, will in turn prompt the DUP to soften its refusal to make any commitments on a time frame.

Mr Adams, talking to The Irish Times yesterday, insisted the next step would be among the most significant yet taken by his movement.

“No one should underestimate how big a step this is, both at a personal and a political level,” he said.

“But I think this is the right thing to do and I think this is the right time to do it.”

Mr Adams requires a two-thirds majority among the 56 delegates to the ardchomhairle to enable a motion changing policy on the PSNI to be put to a special ardfheis.

Time is not on the Sinn Féin president’s side.

In an interview with this newspaper, he says he is committed to engaging widely with republicans to convince them of the merits of his position, a process which could take “some weeks”.

He said he recognises the difficulty many Sinn Féin supporters will have with the issue but is prepared to argue solidly for his cause which will “strengthen the quest for a just and lasting peace”.

The Irish and British governments want Sinn Féin to back the PSNI in time for the planned dissolution of the Stormont Assembly late next month.

If plans go to schedule, then the leading nationalist and unionist parties will be able to begin a six-week campaign on positive manifestos before elections to a new Assembly on March 7th. A new executive including both Sinn Féin and DUP ministers would then assume ministerial powers on March 26th.

The Taoiseach welcomed the Sinn Féin move on policing as “an encouraging and significant development”. Tony Blair also welcomed Mr Adams’s decision.

DUP leader Ian Paisley offered a qualified welcome: “Words alone have never been enough. The DUP will continue to push and push Sinn Féin on these matters.”

Belfast Telegraph

By Chris Thornton
Published: Wednesday 27, December 2006 - 09:20

Killer Michael Stone’s prison security records are believed to be among 800 files mysteriously destroyed by the Prison Service.

Their destruction means Stone’s current guards are unlikely to have a complete record of his contacts and behaviour from when he was first jailed in 1988.

The loss of files is also believed to have hindered the return to prison of Seamus Mullan, an IRA police killer who had his licence revoked last week.

Prison officials insist privately that their computer records contain all the relevant information that they may need about Stone since he was returned to prison after he attacked Stormont in late November.

But the Billy Wright Inquiry team - who exposed the destruction of the security files - have shown that the paper files contained information which has been lost forever.

The inquiry’s hearings in November revealed that the Prison Service destroyed files containing secret security information on about 800 prisoners in 2002.

The files were described as the “principal repository of intelligence information on or about prisoners”.

The inquiry was told the files contained information on virtually every prisoner released under the terms of the Good Friday Agreement - a category which includes Stone and Mullan.

Lawyers argued that the files should have been preserved in case any prisoners who were freed on licence were later returned to jail - just as Stone and Mullan have been over the past month.

A prison governor claimed the files were burned on the order of Martin Mogg, a former Maze prison governor who is now dead. But no record of the destruction was ever made.

The destruction of the files and the disappearance of other documents have thrown up significant obstacles to the inquiry into Wright’s murder, which happened nine years ago today.

Stone was released from six life sentences in July 2000, when the Maze Prison closed, but his freedom was revoked after he stormed Parliament Buildings on November 24.

The Prison Service has refused to confirm or deny the destruction of files about Stone and Mullan.

But officials have insisted that their computer system - known as SASHA - has material on any freed prisoners who might be returned to jail.

But the Billy Wright inquiry team found the computer system was ” deficient” when compared to paper records.

Derek Batchelor QC, the lead counsel for the inquiry, said that computer printouts on paramilitary prisoners returned to jail, like Stone, “did not record any information before 1998″.

In Stone’s case, that means the absence of any records for his first decade in prison. He was originally jailed after attacking an IRA funeral at Milltown Cemetery in Belfast in March 1988, earning him the moniker the Milltown Murderer.

Mullan, from Lisnascreaghog Road, Garvagh, was released the same year the computer system was introduced, meaning most of his information could be lost.

He was jailed for the 1985 murder of Constable Willis Agnew. Described as a disaffected republican, Secretary of State Peter Hain revoked his licence, indicating that he “remains a real danger to the public”.

In contrast to the computer records, the paper files were said to contain ” other relevant material such as papers, reports from other bodies, newspaper clippings, telephone transcripts and the like”.

Mr Batchelor recently cited an incident where information about Billy Wright’s killers that was not on the computer was found in the one of the few remaining paper files.

Stone is currently being held in Maghaberry Prison.

He recently applied for High Court bail, claiming the attack on Stormont was “performance art replicating a terrorist attack”.

The bail application was adjourned to see if forensic evidence would support Stone’s claim that the devices he carried were not capable of injuring anyone.