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To: average joe who wrote (3784)	12/27/2006 8:51:23 PM
From: Tom Clarke	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 5290

The peace process is still processing Mick Fealty December 27, 2006 11:00 AM For those of you still awake at the back, the Northern Irish peace process is still processing. In October, St Andrews in Scotland was the venue for an agreement to come to an agreement, remarkably similar to the last agreement. There are now only two parties to the ongoing negotiations: Sinn Féin and the DUP. Everyone else is standing in the corridors with the rest of the great Northern Irish public to see whether we get white or black smoke. Sinn Féin's president, Gerry Adams, promised in October that a consultation on the deal breaking issue of recognising the police would take weeks rather than months. We are still waiting, nearly three months later. In the event that they do recognise the police, Ian Paisley says he will (however improbably) share power with his former sworn enemies. The latest hold up comes because Sinn Féin wants Paisley to agree to a timetable for the devolution of policing and justice powers to a local (potentially SF controlled) ministry first. During the St Andrews event, Tony Blair called a face-to-face meeting with the three party leaders excluded from intense negotiations: Reg Empey of the UUP, Mark Durkan of the SDLP, and David Ford of the cross community. In it he assured them that whatever form of ratification of any emerging agreement, he did not want an election. He assured his listeners that "that would only harm you guys. And you are the good guys." It says something for the erosion of the prime minster's authority throughout this stop/start process that at least two of the delegations did not believe him. And so now there is to be an election in March, primarily at the behest of the DUP which also happens to be the party likely to gain most from one. Of course, if Sinn Féin does not call a special conference (or Ard Fheis) of the whole party to ratify support for the Police Service of Northern Ireland, all bets are off. Having hived off the sharp end of the anti-terrorist function of the PSNI to MI5, the British government have left little of any controversial consequence for a local ministry to oversee. Oversight remains with the Intelligence and Security Committee in Westminster. The prime minister is keen to get this deal signed off before his own close of business, currently scheduled for the end of July. In the past, vague mutterings about a "plan B" was taken by many to mean a subtle shift in sovereignty towards the Irish Republic, as an (inexplicably unilateral) punishment for unionists. Recently, however (and especially in the wake of some nocturnal conversations at St Andrews), there is a sharper focus on the distinct possibility that failure will actually result in Northern Ireland's assembly having its major functions handed back to Westminster in perpetuity, with a limited set of minor powers being let down to a new set of district councils. How well it concentrates the collective mind, we'll know in the new year. commentisfree.guardian.co.uk