Sinn Féin president Gerry Adams moved swiftly yesterday to build on Sunday's landmark ardfheis decision to support the police by urging immediate co-operation with the PSNI. His comments have intensified pressure on the DUP to declare a willingness to share power with Sinn Féin by the St Andrews Agreement deadline of March 26th.
As of midnight last night the transitional Assembly at Stormont was dissolved and under the St Andrews Agreement the Assembly elections scheduled for March 7th were triggered.
British prime minister Tony Blair is expected to formally call the elections when he meets Taoiseach Bertie Ahern in Downing Street today.
As Northern Ireland politicians prime themselves for Assembly elections on March 7th, Mr Adams has made it clear that republicans should report crimes to the PSNI now.
At Stormont yesterday Mr Adams said republicans had justifiable concerns about the PSNI around issues such as collusion but citing crimes such as rape, attacks on the elderly, car theft, and killings and injuries caused by so-called joyriders whom he described as "death riders", he said victims should seek police help.
"If anything like that happens then what Sinn Féin will be doing will be asking people, urging people, encouraging people to work, to co-operate with the police in taking these people off the streets," he said.
The motion passed by the ardfheis states support for the PSNI would "only" happen when the DUP agreed to share power by March and to the transfer of justice powers to the Northern executive by May 2008. Or failing that when "Plan B" - the strengthening of British-Irish "partnership arrangements" - was put in place.
Mr Adams, however, said that while the Sinn Féin ardchomhairle would meet in Dublin today to decide on how the motion would be implemented, in terms of civic policing there was no conditionality about supporting the PSNI. He was quizzed by reporters in the context of whether such support applied from yesterday. "We need to depoliticise policing and make it non-partisan," said Mr Adams. "But in terms of civic policing, dealing with crimes against the people, there is no equivocation, there are no qualifications and there are no conditions."
Mr Blair indicated yesterday and is expected to emphasise today, that if it were clear there was no chance of powersharing government by the deadline of March 26th then the Assembly elections would be halted.
The Independent Monitoring Commission (IMC) is today publishing its latest report on paramilitary activity which, senior sources say, confirms that the IRA is still meeting its commitments.
Mr Adams upped the tactical ante yesterday by insisting he was "not making any demands of the DUP", that it had the choice of sharing power or accepting the alternative of Plan B.
Sinn Féin as of now co-operating with the PSNI, the positive IMC report, the prospect of halted elections if the DUP does not say it will share power, and the additional prospect of an increased role for Dublin if the DUP does not enter government with Sinn Féin places pressure on the DUP to be more explicit about whether it will share power by March 26th.
DUP deputy leader Peter Robinson was guardedly positive about Mr Adams's remarks without being categorical about powersharing. "We want to see a devolved Assembly operating with people accountable to the electorate in charge. As Dr Paisley said if there is delivery from Sinn Féin the Democratic Unionist Party will not be found wanting," he told the BBC.
