Northern Secretary Peter Hain will today tell rank-and-file PSNI members that, notwithstanding some unionist fears, convicted paramilitaries will be prohibited from joining the police force, according to reliable sources.
Mr Hain, who is today addressing the PSNI's representative body, the Police Federation, is to reassert that paramilitaries with criminal records will be banned from the force despite contrary claims by a number of unionist politicians.
Police Federation members are likely to question him on whether paramilitaries who have no convictions but on whom there is intelligence of membership will also be barred from the PSNI.
Mr Hain, in excluding convicted paramilitaries from policing, was supported in his view by the US consul general in the North, Dean Pittman, who said in Derry yesterday that neither former republican nor loyalist paramilitaries should be allowed join the PSNI.
Mr Pittman also said the violence of recent days would affect investment in the North.
Mr Hain's commitment will be issued as the DUP in particular continues to voice suspicions that a special policing conference due to be organised early next year under the initiative of US special envoy Dr Mitchell Reiss is a device to announce further "concessions" on policing to win Sinn Féin support for the PSNI.
The DUP, still smarting after Dr Reiss's complaint of a failure of unionist leadership over the continuing loyalist violence, has launched fierce attacks on Dr Reiss, with North Belfast MP Nigel Dodds saying he is now "damaged goods".
He said Dr Reiss's comments "could well prove to be one of the most unhelpful, negative and damaging contributions to the political process in recent times".
Both Mr Dodds and Mr Ian Paisley jnr implied that, while publicly Dr Reiss said there should be no paramilitaries in the PSNI, privately he told the DUP the British government might permit them to join the force.
"He proposes a conference on policing which is clearly being suggested to pave the way for further changes to policing even beyond Patten, something which even the SDLP are concerned about.
"His crass behaviour at such a sensitive time is almost incredible. If this is diplomacy in action it beggars belief," said Mr Dodds.
The US consul, Mr Pittman, said he was not going to enter into "tit-for-tat" comments about the private conversations Dr Reiss had had with the DUP.
He insisted, however, that loyalist and republican paramilitaries must not be allowed join the PSNI.
"The issue of former paramilitaries getting into policing here is not on. I don't think there is a place for them.
"I think you want a policing force that communities feel confident in and so the British government have told us they do not plan to wipe the slate clean and allow paramilitaries into the police force and we accept that," Mr Pittman said in Derry.
"If people have broken the law, they are not the kind of people you want in your police force. You want a police force people feel confident in," he said.
During a visit to Groarty integrated primary school, Mr Pittman said that potential investors had received "a terrible message" in terms of whether Northern Ireland was a good place to locate their businesses.
He said that rioting in loyalist areas would impact on the job prospects for those areas. "It was a very bad weekend and a very bad last three days.
"It sent out a terrible message around the world to tourists and to investors, and that is a tough image to overcome.
"There is so much goodness going on in Northern Ireland right now and so many opportunities exist here, but those things got hidden by events such as we saw at the weekend," added Mr Pittman.