People want to see "completion" from the paramilitaries, including the IRA, and want an end to the "nonsense posturing" from some of the political parties, SDLP leader Mark Durkan said yesterday (Wednesday).
Asked how confident he was that a political deal would be reached when Prime Minister Tony Blair and Taoiseach Bertie Ahern return next week, Mr Durkan recalled that while gaps had been bridged when the two leaders were last in Northern Ireland, a deal had not been reached.
"There clearly has to be a deal this time. We can't have parties stringing it out with more ifs and buts, and calling for more time," Mr Durkan said.
"We have to make sure we are going forward on a firm basis which has to be the Good Friday agreement and people have to know it is going to deliver all of the agreement for all of the people," he added.
"The premiers have to come to make good what they said they were going to do. Gaps were closed at Hillsborough. They said they were leaving it to the parties to work on the basis of all we knew and understood and they were coming back.
"People will want to know as part of that outcome that we are going to see completion from paramilitaries, including the IRA. People also want to know there is going to be an end to the nonsense posturing from some of the parties as well, no ifs and no buts about going into the institutions and being a partner in the implementation of the agreement.
"So, there are issues for David Trimble and his party to answer as well as for others."
Mr Durkan was speaking yesterday during a tour of west Belfast, including the heavily fortified Andersonstown Road police station. He said the building was the face of policing in the past and added that the SDLP has an entirely new approach to policing.
Mr Durkan said the party had instigated a lot of change at the level of the Policing Board and within the police service.
"What we have to do now is change policing as people see it and work with it," he said.
He said the public want to see the ongoing presence of a working police service in their neighbourhoods.
"We don't want to see police resources tied up in all this paraphenalia and equipment, this sort of fortified estate. We want to make sure the policing service is there working with other people on the ground in their neighbourhoods, tracking crime and preventing crime."
The SDLP wants to make sure, Mr Durkan said, that military installations and fortified police stations are removed. He suggested that such sites could be converted for community use.
