Politics: Northern Ireland: Sinn Fein conference votes to support NI policing

Canada's state broadcaster CBC News reports "Sinn Fein votes to support Northern Ireland police" (Jan28,2k7).

Members of the Republican Sinn Fein party voted overwhelmingly on Sunday to begin co-operating with the Northern Ireland police.

The vote, by hundreds of party members at a conference in Dublin, formally abandons Sinn Fein's decades-old hostility to legal law and order in the British territory.

The result was confirmed by a sea of raised hands, but no formally recorded vote.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the result increases the chances of reviving a Catholic-Protestant administration, the long-elusive goal of the 1998 Good Friday peace pact, by Britain's deadline of March 26.

One more hurdle overcome. This could be part of a process to bring permanent peace acceptable to all sides. Now attention will turn to focus on the Protestant response, particularly that of leader of the Democratic Unionist Party, Rev Dr Ian Paisley, moderator of the Free Presbyterian Church. In recent months, he met for the first time with the Catholic Bishop of Armagh to pledge together their support commonly-held social goals in the small country, part of the UK.

-- Politicarp