North: Nationalist opponents to meet on policing
The leaders of Sinn Féin and the SDLP were today preparing for face-to-face talks to address their divisions on the police issue.
Gerry Adams and Mark Durkan were poised to have a breakfast meeting covering the policing, Bill of Rights and criminal justice issues.
The talks were expected to focus on the division between the two parties over support for Northern Ireland’s new police service.
Sinn Féin and the SDLP have been bitterly divided since Mr Durkan’s party decided to take its three seats on the North’s new 19-member Policing Board.
The division has spilled over into local government, with the two parties clashing regularly in Derry City Council and engaging in an angry war of words.
The SDLP has accused Sinn Féin of disrupting council business in the city and of vilifying its councillors.
Sinn Féin has, in turn, accused the SDLP of supporting flawed policing structures which do not command the support of the majority of nationalists and republicans.
The SDLP, in a groundbreaking move for a nationalist party last year, decided to join the policing board and become the first politicians from their community to give their public support to the police.
Sinn Féin refused to take up its two seats on the policing board because it claimed the government’s police reforms fell short of the expectations created by the report from the Patten Commission.
The party, which insists it is still engaged in negotiations with Tony Blair’s government on policing, has said the new Police Service of Northern Ireland is still not accountable enough and it has also demanded an end to the use of plastic bullets as a riot control weapon.
Mr Adams was expected today to be joined at the meeting by his party colleague, Sinn Féin chairman Mitchel McLaughlin.
Both men are taking a brief break from campaigning in the general election.
SDLP chairman Alex Attwood was expected to join his party leader at the talks.
