Policing remains a potential political timebomb for Sinn Féin, writes Gerry Moriarty, Northern Editor.
Senior Sinn Féin politicians Gerry Kelly and Raymond McCartney, two former IRA prisoners, turned up yesterday at the Belfast international conference on policing in another sign of the changing times in Northern Ireland.
Their attendance at the prestigious conference hosted by the North's policing board sends a positive signal about the political and policing future.
However, as a recent election exchange on BBC Radio Ulster's Talkback programme made clear, there are still obstacles to be overcome before the policing issue is fully settled.
A caller to the programme, broadcast from Enniskillen, asked what should he do if he saw a group of "disaffected Provisionals or even a smaller republican group with guns". He wondered: "Do I contact the RUC [ sic], or do I turn a blind eye?"
"I can't tell anybody what to do on that point," said Sinn Féin MP for Fermanagh-South Tyrone Michelle Gildernew, prompting "disaffected Provisional" and anti-deal candidate in the constituency Gerry McGeough to interject, "Answer the questions . . . if there are guns, does he report to the British crown forces?"
"I personally wouldn't," said Ms Gildernew, adding, "but I am working very hard to ensure those guns are never used again . . ."
Whatever about the qualification, it was the "I personally wouldn't" that made the impact. It caused outgoing local DUP Assembly member Arlene Foster, also on the Enniskillen panel, to expostulate: "There we are, we don't support the police, we do support the police. Which is it?"
Now Foster would be on the "yes" wing of the DUP party - if we can use that curious phrase in relation to the Democratic Unionists - but you could sense her exasperation.
Gildernew's remark is the type of comment that anti-deal DUP people such as Jim Allister and William McCrea will seize upon to argue that powersharing by the March 26th St Andrews deadline is unrealisable.
You don't want to be flippant about such a serious issue but, say, it was a group of heavily-armed "disaffected Provisionals" parading through west Belfast en route to attack the PSNI station on the Grosvenor Road - what then? Does she report? The joke in Belfast is that she wouldn't need to because "disaffected Provisional" informers would already have touted to the cops about the planned attack.
But there's a potential political timebomb here. Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness are urging nationalists to support the PSNI, and to report ordinary crime to the police. They have also encouraged nationalists to join the PSNI.
What then if our brave band of "disaffected Provisionals" is about to attack police officers who just joined the PSNI - stationed in Grosvenor Road - on the Sinn Féin leadership's recommendation?
Now to some that scenario may appear bordering on the surreal, but it's not simply academic: the Continuity IRA and Real IRA view police officers as "legitimate targets" and would, if they could, attack and kill them.
During the scores of republican policing debates ahead of the Sinn Féin ardfheis to endorse the PSNI, Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Gerry Kelly almost casually swatted away such pharisaical questions, of the type posed on Talkback, with the rebuttal to the dissidents: "You're going nowhere. Catch yourselves on. We are the only people who can truly deliver for republicanism."
Perhaps Gildernew lacked the political savvy of Adams and McGuinness to out-manoeuvre her questioners. Nonetheless, whether or not Sinn Féin support for the PSNI is conditional remains a genuinely tricky matter for the Sinn Féin leaders and they need to figure out the answer if there is to be a chance of powersharing on March 26th.