The Taoiseach has said he cannot recommend that nationalists should join the new Police Service of Northern Ireland as it is planned at present.
Speaking in Zagreb yesterday, where he is attending a meeting of EU and Balkan leaders, Mr Ahern said it was too early for the SDLP and Sinn Fein to nominate members of the Policing Board. Important issues remained to be resolved, he said.
Meanwhile, the only Northern Ireland Catholic on the Patten Commission on Policing, Senator Maurice Hayes, has recommended that Catholics should join the new force.
Nationalist parties would have to decide whether they would "settle for 90 per cent of something or 100 per cent of nothing", he said.
Mr Ahern said that although some of the unresolved issues concerned policing practice rather than political sensitivities, he could not advise nationalists to join the new force.
"Not at this stage but we're not at the end of the process. What we have to do as a Government is to do all we can to try to create the circumstances and to fulfil the conditions that will allow people to say at the end that the Patten process allows both nationalists and unionists to join," he said.
The Taoiseach added: "I think Peter Mandelson was fair enough during the week when he said that he wouldn't expect Seamus Mallon to declare one way or another at this stage. The outstanding issues are the implementation plan, Gough Barracks, the amalgamation of the CID and the Special Branch and some of the issues of the RUC reserve. Some of these issues have to be resolved first.
"And of course there is probably the most difficult issue of all which is hard for people outside to understand, but very easy I think for people who are dealing with this issue, the emotion that is created out of the flags and emblems issue," he said.
The Taoiseach discussed the North with the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, for 2 1/2 hours on Thursday evening, hours after Queen Elizabeth signed the new Police Bill into law.
Mr Ahern praised the performance of the new Northern institutions but said it was essential that Sinn Fein ministers should be allowed to take part in North-South ministerial meetings.
"The North-South dimension is absolutely fundamental to the structures and that's our position. We cannot allow a situation of drift to develop in the North-South dimension."
