Pragmatic peacemaker, traitor or still a republican terrorist?

Another week, another milestone on Northern Ireland's rocky road to a lasting peace. Sinn Fein's decision to drop 86 years of opposition to the police force and British rule of law removed the final obstacle to the restoration of devolved government in Belfast.

The central figure in this, and in so many other twists and turns of Northern Ireland's bloody recent past, was Gerry Adams - the latter-day peacemaker who convinced the Irish republican movement to pursue its aims with ballots rather than bullets.

Under a deal struck between the British and Irish governments, Sinn Fein and the loyalist Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), a March 26 deadline has been set for Northern Ireland's mothballed Stormont Assembly to hold elections and be re-established. It was against this backdrop last Sunday that Mr Adams, 58, the president of Sinn Fein, convinced his membership to accept the historic compromise on police recognition demanded by the DUP as a precondition for forming a power-sharing government.

Some 80 per cent of 1,000 Sinn Fein members at a specially convened ard fheis (conference) voted in favour of a compromise that sits uncomfortably with the party's stated aim of a united Ireland. The result is all the more remarkable given that it came less than a week after an ombudsman's report exposed collusion between the police and loyalist paramilitaries in the cases of 15 murdered Catholics in the 1990s.

Traditionally a hated symbol of British occupation in the eyes of republicans, the Royal Ulster Constabulary was subjected to root-and-branch reform in the late 1990s under the recommendations of the Independent Commission on Policing in Northern Ireland. Lord Patten, fresh from governorship in Hong Kong, headed the commission and in 1998 drafted reforms aimed at winning over Sinn Fein. The RUC was replaced with the Police Service of Northern Ireland, symbols of Britishness were removed from uniforms and measures taken to encourage Catholics to join the predominantly Protestant force.

But many republicans remain to be convinced. At least five of Sinn Fein's assembly members plan to boycott next month's elections and several with close Irish Republican Army links have threatened to stand as old school republican independents against Sinn Fein candidates.