Northern Ireland marks historic deal on police powers

London/Belfast - Protestant and Catholic leaders in Northern Ireland celebrated yet another "historic day" for the troubled province Friday as they finalized a crucial deal on the sensitive issues of policing, justice and parades. The deal, reached after tense marathon talks late Thursday, provides the "last jigsaw" in the devolution of powers from London to the regional institutions in Belfast, Britain's Northern Ireland Secretary Shaun Woodward said.

It is expected to enter into force on April 12 - almost exactly 12 years to the day of the conclusion of the groundbreaking 1998 peace agreement. "This is the last chapter of a long and troubled story and the beginning of a new chapter," said British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who travelled to Belfast for the occasion, joined by Brian Cowen, the Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland. "The deal lays the foundation for a new future," said Cowen, one of "mutual respect for people of different traditions, equality and tolerance."

Peter Robinson, Northern Ireland's First Minister, welcomed the deal while warning sections of the Protestant community "not to play politics" with the agreement now reached.
Gerry Adams, the veteran leader of Sinn Fein, the mainstream Republican-Catholic party, said the deal offered a "wonderful chance now in a new spirit for us all to go forward."

The exuberant praise expressed by all participants is a reflection of the relief felt over the agreement after negotiations had repeatedly broken down and threatened the very survival of the power-sharing government in Belfast between Robinson's Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) and Sinn Fein.

Under the deal, the British province, which ceded policing and justice powers to the parliament in London at the height of the "Troubles" in 1972, will add a new ministry of justice to its range of regional portfolios. As well as taking over responsibility for the police, the new ministry will oversee the public prosecution service and the courts and probation services.

The British government has pledged 800 million pounds (1.3 billion dollars) to back the plans.
There has also been agreement on the greater involvement of "local groups" in the organization and control of annual Protestant and Catholic parades, which have been a contentious issue over decades in Northern Ireland.

Given the troubled history of sectarian violence, which started in the late 1960s and continued well into the 1990s, the question of trust in the police and justice authorities has been among the hardest issues to tackle after the 1998 peace accord. The former Protestant-dominated Royal Ulster Constabulary, replaced by the new Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) in 2001, simply had no legitimacy in the eyes of Catholics in Northern Ireland. During the "Troubles" more than 3,500 people lost their lives, among them 300 police offers - most of them victims of the former terrorist Irish Republican Army (IRA).

In 1999, a year after the peace agreement, just 8 per cent of the province's police officers were Catholics. But since the establishment of PSNI, that percentage has risen to more than 25 per cent, with a 50:50 recruitment policy the ultimate target.

However, while the mainstream IRA laid down its arms in 2005, dissident groups have pursued a low-level campaign of violence in recent years, culminating in the murder a year ago of two British soldier and a police officer in the province. Almost daily low-level attacks on police stations and individuals continue. The politicians now hope that by by placing key police and justice powers back into the hands of Northern Ireland's mainstream parties, the destabilizing violence will stop. "They (the dissidents) have to recognize this morning that the game is up," Woodward said in Belfast Friday.

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