Nationalist and republican politicians have continued to voice concerns that the Patten proposals could be modified. New legislation on police reform is about to be brought before the British houses of parliament.
The SDLP and Sinn Fein insist that if the Hillsborough proposals are to lead to the successful reinstatement of the political institutions, the RUC name and symbols must be replaced by the Police Service of Northern Ireland and neutral symbols. "Any tampering with Patten would be a recipe for disaster," the Sinn Fein vice-president, Mr Pat Doherty, said, following a party ard chomhairle meeting in Dublin yesterday.
For many nationalists, Patten did not go far enough, he said. "We need to establish a non-partisan, non-political police force that nationalists and republicans can recommend young nationalists to join and that will serve the entire community."
Mr Alex Attwood, a west Belfast SDLP Assembly member, also said the RUC title must go, otherwise nationalists would not join the new force. "As the British government has previously stated, a change in name underlines a new start, and is a necessary and indispensable part of attracting in recruits."
Mr Attwood said there were mechanisms outside the Patten proposals whereby the suffering of RUC members and their families could be fully acknowledged.
The DUP leader, the Rev Ian Paisley, who is due to meet the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, in London today, said the Hillsborough proposals represented "another fraud on the unionist population". It was clear from the IRA statement that decommissioning as envisaged in the Belfast Agreement, the actual destruction of weaponry, would never take place.
Dr Paisley said the offer to put arms beyond use was illusory. "The IRA say that the weapons will be completely beyond use. They do not pledge that they will be permanently beyond use. In 1994 the IRA said that the ceasefire was complete. They refused to say it was permanent," he said.
The 32 County Sovereignty Movement, the purported political wing of the "Real IRA", said the IRA statement was "incompatible with every principle of Irish republicanism", and asked how much longer the Provisional leadership expected republicans "to listen to such nonsense as the type of statement that was issued on May 6th".
The Sinn Fein chairman, Mr Mitchel McLaughlin, yesterday flew to the US where he will brief politicians, Irish-American interests and Sinn Fein supporters in Washington and New York on current developments.
The DUP Assembly member for Mid Ulster, the Rev William McCrea, said he was in absolutely no doubt that Mr Trimble was "preparing the ground for his ultimate and final act of treachery and betrayal of the people of Ulster by accepting the recent IRA statement".
