The Sinn Fein president, Mr Gerry Adams, has denied his party will never sign up to a new policing service in the North. Writing in today's Irish Times, he says the party will "give a fair wind" to alternative policing proposals.
"The Patten Report, if fully implemented, may give us the opportunity to do that. The Mandelson Policing Bill does not," he writes. Mr Adams repeats Sinn Fein's claim that the Patten proposals have been considerably watered down in the legislation currently before the British parliament.
The Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, had promised to implement the recommendations but he had either underestimated the resistance from the British establishment; delegated authority to others who did not share his view; or else changed his mind on policing.
"The faceless men within the sub-committees which managed British rule in the North of Ireland for the last 30 years have lots of good reasons for resisting the advent of civic policing," Mr Adams said.
"The state apparatus which co-ordinated the counter-insurgency drive of the last few decades has wielded unprecedented power on a range of judicial, military, political, economic, social and planning matters, and will not easily give up that power."
Mr Adams accuses the British government of engaging in a propaganda campaign against his party over policing. "At the heart of this spin is the lie that Sinn Fein will never sign up to a new policing service anyway. That is not the case. Sinn Fein want a new policing service and we will not settle for something less."
If the peace process was to succeed, there had to be a police force which republicans could join and encourage others to join.