The US has said it is willing to resume the training of Northern Ireland police officers, suspended two years ago over human rights concerns, but it retained a qualification to its offer that is certain to cause continuing friction.
All training will have to include a human rights component and any officers of the Police Service of Northern Ireland involved will have to be vetted to ensure they do not have any human rights blemishes in their past.
The conditions require the Justice Department to have in place procedures to ensure that training is not provided to "RUC members where there are substantial grounds for believing they have committed or condoned violations of internationally recognised human rights, including any role in the murder of Patrick Finucane or Rosemary Nelson or other violence or serious threats of violence against defence attorneys in Northern Ireland".
The lifting of the ban on all training of members of the then RUC, imposed in 1999, was made possible by the signing by President Bush yesterday of a certificate attesting to the commitment of both Dublin and London to the full implementation of the Patten report on policing.
The instigator of the language used in the original amendment, a New Jersey Democratic member of the House, Mr Chris Smith, welcomed Mr Bush's move.
He said the provisions would ensure that abusers did not use the programme as reason to advance and gain positions of greater authority in the new police force.
"Human rights abusers should never be rewarded or advanced," he said, insisting that a simple deletion of the original provision was never on. "We owe it to Rosemary Nelson and Patrick Finucane to implement, not repeal, legislation that puts human rights and the rights of defence attorneys at the core of the policing programme."
Meanwhile Congressional sources were unable yesterday to confirm a British media report of the appointment of the Chief Constable of the Police Service, Sir Ronnie Flanagan, to a post in the FBI.
