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Sinn Fein lists demands for changes in policing

February 16, 2011

By Staff Reporter

Sinn Fein has compiled what has been described as a “wish list” which runs to more than 50 pages. Some of these have been revealed during the intense round of negotiations now in progress, during which the British and Irish governments have been focusing on their demand that the IRA must engage in an “act of completion” — a euphemism for disbandment — in return for British “demilitarization” and other concessions. This, they hope, would allow the Ulster Unionist Party to go back into partnership with Sinn Fein in a new power-sharing assembly before the May 1 elections.
However, Sinn Fein has in the meantime produced a series of further demands. These include a demand that the Irish government have a say over policing arrangements in Northern Ireland, the gradual “harmonization” of Southern Irish and Northern Irish systems of law, and the creation of a “constitutional court” for the whole of the country. Reportedly, these and other demands were outlined in a letter from Gerry Kelly, the Sinn Fein assembly member for North Belfast, to the British. Kelly is one of the highest-ranking members of the IRA and for a time served as the adjutant general on the Army Council, the IRA’s governing body. He served a long prison sentence for taking part in the first Provisional IRA bombing of London, in March 1973.
In news reports, Kelly’s other demands were said to include an all-Ireland police college and provisions to allow Southern judges to work in Northern Ireland. According to the London Times, Sinn Fein is asking for:

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