Blair: Sinn Fein must back police soon, or N. Ireland power-sharing in doubt

Thursday, January 4th 2007, 8:48 am

By: News On 6

LONDON (AP) _ Prime Minister Tony Blair cut short his Christmas vacation Thursday to resume a diplomatic push on Northern Ireland, where hopes of striking a power-sharing deal are fading.

Blair returned to his Downing Street office a day early, following a 10-day break in Florida, to intensify his push for a deal between the two biggest parties in Northern Ireland: the British Protestants of the Democratic Unionists and the Catholics of Sinn Fein, the Irish Republican Army-linked party.

The British leader _ who has made peace and stability in Northern Ireland a top priority since his rise to power a decade ago _ warned that his timetable to restore power-sharing in the province in March was in doubt.

In a statement, Blair said the key was for Sinn Fein to end its decades-old hostility to law and order in Northern Ireland and open normal relations with the province's police force.

If this failed to happen clearly and quickly, he said, there would be ``no point'' in holding an election in March for a new Northern Ireland Assembly, the 108-member body with the power to form or block a Catholic-Protestant administration.

Blair said Sinn Fein leaders must ``encourage everyone to cooperate fully with the police services in tackling crime in all areas as well as actively supporting all the criminal justice institutions.''

The prime minister emphasized that if Sinn Fein made this historic shift, Britain would plan to shift government control of the police and courts to local hands by May 2008.

Blair said that ``if there is delivery by Sinn Fein of support for the police, courts and rule of law ... then there should be devolution of policing and justice.''

Sinn Fein has demanded that government oversight of the police be transferred quickly once a power-sharing coalition gains office. But the Democratic Unionists _ fearful that a Sinn Fein official could get the new police and justice post _ say they could veto the shift of power indefinitely.

At stake is the revival of power-sharing, the overarching vision of the Good Friday peace accord of 1998. Cooperation has been on hold since October 2002, when a four-party coalition collapsed amid chronic tensions between Protestants and Sinn Fein.

Sinn Fein leaders last week voted to organize a special party conference on the matter _ but only if the Democratic Unionist Party issued a sufficiently positive response to the move.

On Wednesday night, Sinn Fein issued a statement that suggested the plan for a party conference had been put on hold. ``To date there has been no such positive response from the DUP,'' Sinn Fein said.

Blair hopes to dissolve the current Northern Ireland Assembly on Jan. 30 followed by the election of a new Assembly on March 7. It would elect a 12-member administration March 14 that would receive control of 13 government departments in Northern Ireland on March 26