Agreement with thenationalist community on the future of the North's police service is "near", Northern Ireland Secretary John Reid said today.
Dr Reid today told Sky News's
Sunday with Adam Boulton
: "We want a new police service and we can only do that by agreement with representatives of the nationalist community.
"I think we are near that and of course I want to see that normalisation of Northern Irish society to proceed."
Sinn Féin and the SDLP have so far said they could not advise young Catholics to join the new Police Service of Northern Ireland, largely because of the continued use of symbols such as the Union Flag and concerns over the powers of the proposed police board and ombudsman.
But recent figures showed more than a third of the 7,700 people who have applied to join the new force are Catholic, suggesting it has achieved a degree of acceptance within the nationalist community.
Dr Reid denied the changes to the police service were driven by the desire to appease either the nationalist or unionist communities.
"I don't think that giving Northern Ireland a police service that is accepted by and participated in by all sections of the Northern Irish community is somehow a concession to one side or one party," he said.
"It isn't. It is what should happen in a modern, open, equal, democratic society and that is what we are establishing."
Dr Reid accepted there was concern among all communities about slow progress on the implementation of the Belfast Agreement.
But he insisted: "While there is this dissatisfaction with the rate of implementation of some of the aspects of that agreement, there is no question of us abandoning the agreement and throwing it out on the belief that there is another agreement out there somewhere, just to please one section of Northern Ireland.
"What we can't have is an agreement only involving one section of the community or a system whereby everyone cherry-picks the bits that they like and says that's the only bits that matter."
Dr Reid rejected the claim of the Democratic Unionist Party's Peter Robinson that Prime Minister Tony Blair was showing a "tendency towards fascism" by excluding his party from talks at Downing Street tomorrow.
He said: "I think he will come to regret that remark. When people go around calling a democratic Prime Minister ... near-fascist, that extremity of language doesn't help anybody." Ian Paisley's DUP would not be at tomorrow's meeting - to be attended by the Ulster Unionists, Sinn Féin and the SDLP - because it refuses to talk to the Taoiseach, Mr Bertie Ahern, who will also be present, he said.
"We are going to talk to the DUP as soon as they can agree to come to Downing Street. We have already invited them.
"I talked to Dr Paisley a few days ago and the Prime Minister will talk to him. I hope we have something constructive to say."
Dr Reid later told BBC1's On the Record that there was "no alternative" to the Belfast Agreement.
He insisted a failure to achieve decommissioning of paramilitary arms by the end of June would not lead to a collapse of the Agreement.
UUP leader David Trimble has said he will resign as First Minister of the Northern Ireland Assembly if no progress has been made on arms by this date, but Dr Reid insisted that it was not a deadline, but a target.
"We said last year that both governments believed and hoped that substantial progress would be made on all of these areas by June of this year.
"It is a target. We want to make progress, but please don't put us in the position where if all guns haven't been decommissioned by what you call a deadline, then somehow the whole Agreement is over.
"If I could sit here today and say that this was all going to be finished by July 1, there wouldn't be the need for the intensive talks. That is precisely why we are going into negotiations during the course of the week.
"Decommissioning is an important issue and one which over the coming few weeks we have got to address, and Sinn Féin have to recognise that there are deep concerns in the unionist community and those concerns have been expressed by David Trimble and I hope they address that."
He added: "The only way that these paramilitary weapons can be put beyond use is by the paramilitaries themselves acting on the Good Friday Agreement, not just the IRA, but of course particularly the IRA."
Dr Reid said decommissioning need not necessarily involve the physical destruction of weapons: "What we are talking about is putting weapons verifiably and permanently beyond use.
"There are any number of ways of doing that for an ingenious person and the people who will decide whether progress has been made on that issue are the independent commission chaired by John de Chastelain."
PA